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GALLIA

By

MENIE MURIEL DOWIE

AUTHOR OF " A GIRL
IN THE KARPATHIANS"

PHILADELPHIA

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY „ rr-

189s

COPYRIGHT, 1895,
BY

J. B. Lipfincott Company.

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

-W

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GALLIA.

CHAPTEE I.

A little thought will usually show where a
story begins. Gurdon considered very rightly
that his began with a visit he paid to old Mrs.
Leighton in Cornwall Gardens. At least he
knew it did not begin when he was at home, nor
when he was at Rugby, nor yet when he spent
two years at the Lyeee in Bordeaux (though he
hesitated about this part, and sometimes won-
dered if that had been the prologue). The in-
terval of his life in Munich and his life in Lon-
don, and again at Oxford, where he passed his
examination for the Civil Service, was a barren
period, with no suggestion of a story about it.
But the call he had felt himself impelled to
make in Cornwall Gardens, because Mrs. Leigh-
ton was a connection of the Secretary of State
for the Colonies, and by no means a quantite nl-
gligeable, had something about it of an inaugura-
tive character, and when he looked back upon
it, he perceived that this was because it had
quite certainly ushered in an incident.

3

4 GALLIA.

The incident was his journey to Paris.

" It is about Robbie," Mrs. Leigbton bad said,
as the last visitor swept round the corner of the
screen.

"Ah!"

" Yes. You will know that I do not care a rap
about Eobbie, although he is my only grandson
— but I think of the family."

" Just so," said Gurdon, who knew that Mrs.
Leigbton cared innumerable raps about Eobbie,
and didn't think for a second about the family.
" And what about him ?"

" He is getting into the ways of wicked Paris.
You know what I mean ?"

Gurdon wasn't qualifying as a silent servant
of his country for nothing; he didn't know in
the least what she meant. He waited, looking
steadily at her.

" Ah, well, you have always been so steady,"
she went on, with a faint sigh, as though this
were regrettable ; " but — er — Paris — the menage
a deux. Ah, these artists — and their models !"

Mrs. Leighton was a very rusee and clever old
lady, and her uplifted eyes as she said " these
artists," coupled with the quaint, dry twist in
her voice when she said " their models," were
quite funny.

Gurdon never smiled, although perhaps Mrs.
Leighton meant him to. He knew the old
lady's foible was to be credited with a vast

GALLIA. 5

knowledge of wickedness and that tenderness
for the wicked which is supposed to proceed from
" tout comprendre." He had heard Robbie say
that the stories his grandmother could get out
of one glass of Chartreuse, about the days when
she was a young girl and stayed with her aunt
at the French Embassy, licked anything a man
could find in three times the quantity of Kiim-
mel, and Eobbie didn't mean it as a compli-
ment. Although he might be a bad boy, he had
all that feeling of particularity about the minds
of his female relatives which is an Englishman's
trait as exclusive as it is touching. He was too
young to perceive that, being two generations
younger than his grandmother, his idea of
humour must be immeasurably different. She
belonged to the day when a clever woman of
undoubted propriety made a reputation for wit
by an audacity that was nicely calculated.

" You were not thinking of going to Paris for
your holiday, perhaps ?" Mrs. Leighton went on,
after a little pause.

Mark Gurdon was not without politeness.
" "Well, in point of fact, I rather was !" he said
quickly, being careful to make it seem as though
she had by chance lit upon a plan he had been
turning over.

It wouldn't be a bad thing for him to do Mrs.
Leighton any little favour, but it would have
been a very bad thing if he had let her sus-
l*

6 GALLIA.

pect that he thought he was doing her a
favour.

" If you do, I wish you would just burst in
upon Robbie."

Gurdon had no difficulty in suppressing a
smile at the picture Mrs. Leighton had so evi-
dently formed of her grandson's surroundings.

" Has he been exceeding his allowance ?" was
all he said, however.

" ~Now, how like a man !" cried Mrs. Leighton.
" Of course, if he didn't exceed his allowance,
you cannot imagine that there should be any-
thing to criticise in his way of life. Good
heavens, what a moral code !"

"My dear lady" — Gurdon began, with great
deference and in defence, but he was drowned
immediately. s

" Let me tell you that these people are not all
disastrously expensive ! On the stage, in books,
I grant you ; but in real life — especially French
real life in the neighbourhood of the studios —
they are often remarkably thrifty and careful.
Models, drawn from the peasant class, they have
not forgotten the habits of their parents. They
are not all young and pretty and fond of dress
(as for that, models are never pretty in real life) ;
they are middle-aged and plain, their minds set
on Economies, their only expense to keep a big
blue bow on the neck of the odious little white
dog they usually cherish !"

GALLIA. 7

" My dear Mrs. Leighton, your intimate knowl-
edge"— began Gurdon, now frankly laughing,
but she swept him up brusquely again.

" Of course, never tell me ! Wasn't Paris my
home, and don't I know it — grille, entresol, grenier,
and sous le toit f"

She made a funny little upward movement
with the gold double eyeglass, and Gurdon never
paused to ask himself how a life at the Embassy
could have furnished so vivid an insight into
these byeways ; he merely noticed what an esprit
the old soul had, and what a perfect French
tongue she spoke with.

He rose and held out his hand, smiling. Mrs.
Leighton liked Gurdon, his smiles and his
silences and his appreciation ; she often said to
her step-sister, who, though twenty years her
junior, was her great friend, "Mark will go
far." And she did not like him less because he
so obviously thought as much himself. She
was old, and she knew that no man goes far
who doesn't think he will go far and mean to all
the time.

" You will hear from me in Paris. I foresee
myself strangling that dog in its own blue bow,
and pitching the lady after it into the street.
But, you know, Robbie is no infant; he may
have his own ideas of manly independence."

" Robbie has no ideas of any kind," said his
grandmother with scorn — " no ideas at all be-

8 GALLIA.

yond plein air and — and that sort of thing. That
is what I dislike about it. There are two ways
of being vicious, my dear boy — one of them com-
mands at least a little respect. Some men are
vicious from conviction — but of the men who
are vicious from convention what are you to
say?" The little movement of her pretty old
white hands with which she accompanied this
mot, gave Gurdon an opportunity of kissing one
of them in leavetaking. The skin felt like fine
crumpled tissue-paper, and had a little breath of
fleur de limon about it — the old French scent
Mrs. Leighton habitually used.

" Some from conviction, others from conven-
tion," repeated Gurdon to himself when he got
into the street. " What a dear, queer, charming
old humbug she is !"

CHAPTEE II.

It was by means of a little blue poste-UUgraphe
that Grurdon announced his arrival in Paris to
his old college friend Leighton, who lived, or at
anyrate had a studio, far out in the Passage des
Favorites ; and it was another little blue poste-
telegraphe which came to his hotel, the Lille et
d' Albion in the Rue de Rivoli, and carried
Leighton's welcome and his invitation to join
him at a certain public studio in the Latin
Quarter, where he still studied rather fitfully.

" Dear old man, this is a rare surprise !"
Leighton said, when, later in the day, he saw
the tall, English-looking figure of his friend at
the edge of the blue smoke that filled the men's
studio. They shook hands and looked at each
other. They had shaken hands last in the im-
possible flurry of the Oxford railway platform,
and no one who had seen them there would
have wondered that the porter followed quite
another young man with the portmanteaux, and
stared wildly among fifty more in a vain en-
deavour to recognise the gentleman who had
engaged him. They were like any thousand of
young men at that time ; now, only two years
later, they had changed immensely. Leighton's

10 GALLIA.

fair hair was four inches long where it had been
barely half an inch, he had a weird beard of
rough tow-coloured stuff which partially covered
his white throat. He was extremely d&colleti.
A horrid rag of a tie disappeared into a stained
blue waistcoat front, and a grey jacket with
gaping side pockets modelled his muscles effect-
ively with its greasy shine. Gurdon? "Well,
Gurdon looked exactly as one would have ex-
pected. He wore a brown travelling serge, a
white shirt, and a black bow tie. He was clean
shaven, his rather hatchet-shaped face pale and
sallow, his reddish- dark hair just long enough
to part in the middle, and rigorously flattened
below a brown crush hat. There was about him
that suggestion of baths and shaves and tailors
and general precision, of which one is ashamed
to feel a little tired, because it is in itself so ad-
mirable.

" One must spend one's holiday somewhere,"
Gurdon was murmuring. "Thought I'd look
you up. Paris is always all right for a holiday."

" The only place in the world fit to live in, I
say," the other replied. " Now I'm just done.
The light has been vile all afternoon, and I'm
tired of sweating after the tone of that mossy
old beggar over there. I'll get my traps, and
we'll come along and have a yarn somewhere."

Gurdon's eye travelled towards the model,
whom his friend's phrase had most aptly pictured.

GALLIA. 11

" Magnificent chest and shoulders," he said
admiringly.

" Ha, ha ! rather ! That's old Lemuel's strong
point. He travels on that chest and shoulders,
I can tell you. Here's a friend of mine thinks
you've got a beau torse, Lemuel, hein ?"

A few gurgling laughs and chuckles followed
this sally, and one or two men looked up lazily
at Gurdon for a moment. It seemed to he an
old studio joke, and some muttered comments
in French, American, and other foreign lan-
guages rumbled about the studio.

The old Hercules upon the platform smiled
a little, as at a familiar compliment; without
altering the pose, he seemed to stiffen proudly ;
the muscles in his right arm swelled and the
strong old fingers grasping the wooden spear
contracted a trifle more firmly. It was the end
of the last hour of the afternoon when models
get slack sometimes; and the half-jocular bit
of praise, as well as the knowledge that a
stranger was looking at him, served to brisk
up the splendid old figure, on which forty
pairs of eyes had been fastened more or less all
day.

"He understands English, then, does he?"
Gurdon asked, with some curiosity.

" Oh, he is English. Lemuel is a character,
too, I can tell you. Hasn't always been a model,
by any means."

12 GALLIA.

" No, I should say not. He never developed
that muscle in this atmosphere."

" Pretty foul, isn't it ? I expect it strikes you.
I'm used to it. They will smoke that Petit
Caporal, and that's what does it. "Well, there
is not any tobacco in France, anyhow."

" I daresay you'll welcome a pound or two
of the old stuff, then ?"

"My dear fellow! How fearfully decent of
you ! You can't beat England for some things —
pals and tobacco."

They made their way into the grey and
dismal little street. It was winter, but not cold.
Neither of them wore an overcoat, and they
stepped out briskly in the direction of the Gare
Montparnasse.

They may have had a good deal to say, but
they talked only in snatches. There was much
cordiality in their voices, but their interests were
now so different, and their lives had strayed so
far apart that there could be no consecutive talk
between them all at once.

When they had struck obliquely into the Rue
Vaugirard, Leighton paused suddenly.

" I was taking you to my old barracks in the
Passage," he said, "but I don't see the good.
The light has gone, and you won't be able to see
my things — that is, even if you want to." Mark
interjected something friendly. " And I really
don't see the good."

GALLIA. 13

" "Well, let us consider what we are going to
do to-night," said Gurdon, noting what he
imagined to be his friend's reluctance to go to
the studio. That was so like Leighton — never
to consider how far he was going to admit his
friend to the intimacies of his new life until they
were half-way to the very scene of them, then to
pull up and bungle out something about the light.

In which reflection Mark utterly misjudged
Robbie.

" I'm out of things here, of course. It's ages
since I was in Paris. I look to you, Eob, to take
me about."

" I'll take you round," Rob answered, with a
burlesque wink. " And I suppose you don't
mean Bulliers and that sort of haunt; you mean
the Divan Japonais and the Alcazar, eh ?"

Mark nodded.

" "Well, I'll have to shine out in some other
togs. So we'll go to the studio, and you'll wait
and look about you, while I adorn in a corner
behind a wide-meshed fishing-net."

They set out at a swinging pace, and Mark
pondered. This time they didn't talk; Mark
looked about him after the fashion of a man
who notices things, not effects, and Leighton got
all the society he wanted out of the cigar Mark
had handed him at the studio door.

"How about the old lady? But I suppose
you never see her much ?"

14 GALLIA.

" On the contrary, I sat opposite to her at
dinner at the Fearon's the other night, and I
have even called. She is brisker than ever, and
of a freshness that shamed half the young women
in the room — or should have done."

" Say anything about me ?"

" Oh, hoped I would see you when I went to
Paris, and no doubt will expect me to tell her
how you are getting on. She is interested in
you, you know."

" Rather, and I believe she's the only member
of the family who wasn't disappointed when I
turned painter. She sent for me when she
heard it. She said, " Robert, you are an inde-
pendent boy, and I like you. Go to Paris.
Never mind what your uncle says; he doesn't
know Paris. It's the only place to qualify as a
human being who understands his world. Be a
painter. I don't mind if you are a failure or a
success, only don't give it up; stick to it and
get all you can out of it. You start on Thurs-
day ? Very well. Taste all the flavours of the
art life, it is very developing. I will stop your
allowance from Thursday. It would never do
for you to have money; you would not develop
character, you would not see real life."

Leighton had attempted some little imitation
of his grandmother's manner, and Mark roared
with laughter at the climax of her advice.

" "Was she as good as her word ?" he asked.

GALLIA. 15

" Every bit !" said Eobbie, with enthusiasm.
" She's a rare old woman, and I'm proud of her.
Never you believe in her wickedness ; she isn't
half as bad as she'd make you think, nor half as
fond of the devil as she says."

" I have no doubt that she wouldn't be hard
on a man, though, if — er — if he wasn't quite
straight ?" Gurdon said, and looked tentatively
at the houses and the evening sky.

" She abdicated her right to oversee my con-
duct when she stopped that four-fifty," Eobbie
said, with a shrewd chirp in his voice.

Gurdon felt amazed, but volunteered no com-
ment.

" Your uncle still holds out, I suppose ?" he
asked carelessly.

" Yes, he used to make up my grandmother's
money to six hundred. That was in Oxford days,
you remember. A daughter was not expensive,
he said, and he could afford it. I should just
about say he could. He was pretty sick when I
made a break for Paris, but the money goes on,
thank God ! for it's all I have. And of course
he was not bound to do anything at all, as he's
only an uncle by marriage — and that with a
difference. Besides, he's as close as a locked
door, the worthy Hamesthwaite."

The subject of Leighton's worldly goods
dropped, and they swung along in silence for a
good way.

16 GALLIA.

" Now, it's not far off. I warn you, you'll be
surprised when you see the kind of place I build
in. Anything lonelier or less attractive — from
an average point of view — than the Passage des
Favorites never was conceived by mortal architect
or builder. I've often wondered what Favorites ?
Most favourites wouldn't care to live here, I take
it."

Gurdon turned a pair of hazel-grey eyes slowly
upon him, but there was nothing to be made of
Robbie's open face ; the blue eyes looked straight
before him, the lids narrowing themselves from
time to time as he tasted a snatch of compo-
sition in the surrounding buildings or the street.
Gurdon gave it up.

" We turn on our left sharp now."

They had been walking about half an hour.
The road was unmade and muddy, no longer
a street, but a road ; there were bleak gardens
with dying shrubs in them, and great glass balls
set up on small pillars, and heaps of shells, and
stones, and coloured glass, and other excrescences
of bad taste in suburban horticulture. The
houses were no longer in rows, they were scat-
tered, and occasional blank building-fields could
be seen over wood palings ; fields edged by a
segment of a street consisting of one block of
painfully narrow houses with raw edges. Over
everything there was an air of neglect, of disap-
pointed, disheartened effort, or candid squalor;

GALLIA. 17

it made an impression of the utmost desolation
upon Gurdon, and he wondered what in heaven's
name could cause a man whose very profession
presupposed a love of beauty, to choose such a
spot.

"Grand place for an artist this," Leighton
broke out with warm enthusiasm, and flung tbe
end of his cigar at a broken statue which was
set up behind a bush of hemlock in the garden
they were passing. " You have no idea of the
queer things you see here sometimes. You'd
hardly think Paris had an edge like this, would
you ? Over there is the barribre" waving a hand
on which charcoal had formed an effective back-
ground to a turquoise set in silver, in the direc-
tion of the sunset. " The lights that travel over
this plain sometimes are magnificent. Now, for
instance, look now how the thing composes!
You see where they have been pulling down the
backs of these houses — you see that heap of yel-
low sand with the puddle in the middle where
they've been making mortar, and that heap of
concrete there for the new facade, and the yellow
freestone with the saw still in it ? Look how the
sun leaps into that puddle and catches hold of
that saw. Jove ! I've got to paint that thing one
of these days."

Gurdon felt instructed, and really did think he
saw something rather fine about it.

" I shall call it ' Well begun is ill done,' if I send
b S*

18 GALLIA.

it to England ; they love titles at the Academy,"
Leighton went on, with the same warmth, already
seeing the thing packed for delivery at a London
exhibition. " I wonder if I've got the key. Oh,
perhaps Arsenie will be home by now. Here,
Gurdon, stop ! this is our door. Where were
you off to ?"

CHAPTEE III.

" "Who is Arsenie ?" Gurdon asked, as lightly-
as he could, and smiling.

"Arsenie? Have I not mentioned her?"
Leighton looked at him in frank surprise. " Oh,
she lives with me, and cooks, and looks after me,
and keeps me out of mischief." He laughed —
laughed like a Paris art student.

" You're pretty well acclimatised," Mark man-
aged to say, with admirable carelessness, for the
fact was, he had never believed a word of old
Mrs. Leighton's story, and with every step he
took towards the Passage des Favorites it had
seemed more and more improbable.

Leighton laughed again, this time with just a
shade of colour in his forehead. " You mustn't
expect a great beauty. She's not that. Queer
name, isn't it — Arsenie ? Everybody calls her
Arsenic, but that really is a bit rough."

They had been standing at the door all this
time, Robbie striking the key on the iron handle
as he gave these hurried particulars. Now a step
sounded inside, and the door was opened from
within.

" J'amene un ami a moi, belle, mais ne te

\9

20 GALLIA.

derange pas," Leighton said in execrable French
as they went inside.

" Tiens, bon — s'il ne veut pas manger !" cried
tbe woman in a voice very shrill, but gay. She
had the coarse, rough black hair of the Midi, and
the sallow skin and large features, but there was
a possibility of drama in her pose, of repartee
upon her thick lips, and of immense practi-
cality in her shrewd, bold eye. She looked about
thirty-four as she stood there, carelessly dressed,
and with no figure in particular. In point of
fact, she had the most perfect classic build of any
model in the Quartier. It was because she was
so like Venus that she was dowdy in common
clothing. There were lines of temper, and
power, and dominance in her forehead. She had
a small casserole in one hand and a spoon in the
other; she was cooldng the evening meal, and
after she had looked at Grurdon a moment with
a very direct but friendly stare, she turned back
to a corner where a ridiculous little fourneau and
charcoal stove had been accommodated.

" I could never keep out of debt in this world
if I hadn't Arsenie," said Robbie, bringing his
glance from the stove to Gurdon's inexpressive
face. " I don't owe a penny, and I don't believe
I've been drunk since last Mi-Car§me. If I had
that four-fifty I could afford to do without her,
and go to the bad — as it is, I couldn't. Hello,
IiU-lu !"

GALLIA. 21

A very small fluffy white dog got up from a
heap of drapery in a corner, and came wagging
and wriggling towards Leighton ; it wore an im-
mense blue bow upon its neck. Gurdon passed
his hand over his forehead, and walked a few
paces to a dark corner, where a shabby divan
was constructed below a big brown barge-sail.
He was a good deal perplexed.

" I shall change now, Mark ; take a squint at
those croquis over there."

Gurdon moved nearer to the divan. It was a
big, barn-like studio and at the other end he
could hear Arsgnie playing with the little dog in
a voice like the sharpening of a carving-knife,
and with a rough show of affection that made
him shudder. All round, the walls were pinned
over with sketches, studies, schemes for pictures,
caricatures, verses, impertinences and toys from
Carnival time. On the floor a few mats were
lying, and skins. All was wonderfully clean,
nothing but the ashes of cigarettes lay upon the
divan or the floor. A pair of wooden sabots
were in a corner, a few hats hung on pegs.
Gurdon made a careful inspection of these things,
because he felt really interested, and he saw that
his friend's hand was strong and sure, and ut-
terly different from what it had been when he
drew dons and proctors and freshers in the old
days.

He turned to go over to the stove and talk to

22 GALLIA.

Ars&rie, but at that moment she opened a little
door and disappeared, striking matches and evi-
dently engaged in getting a light.

He pushed aside a heap of clothes on the
divan and sat down to rest a minute till she
came back.

To his amazement, a head reared itself at the
other end of the heap of clothing, — a head with
a good deal of black-brown hair cut short and a
pair of very round, very sleepy eyes; two feet
thrust themselves out of his end of the bundle
and swung to the floor. The figure sat and then
stood up and shook herself; she seemed a girl
of about eighteen.

" Qui done ?" she said, looking candidly and
laughingly at Gurdon. Just then Leighton came
in, hitching his shoulders into a black coat, which
was less familiar to him than his grey jacket.

" Hullo, young Lemuel, you here ?" he said in
English.

"Yes; been asleep, though. "Who is this?"
She pointed to Gurdon as though she ought to
be told at once of any intruder into the circle.

" Friend of mine from England, Gurdon by
name. Look here, Lemuel, don't you make love
to him."

The girl leapt into the air with a high, curious
shriek of amusement and delight. She was a
round well-developed creature, but she was light
and fearfully agile, and it made a wonderful

GALLIA. 23

effect. "WTien she descended, she cut a strange
step towards Gurdon, flung both her arms round
his head and kissed him on his severe, neatly-
shaven lips. Then she went off into the gayest,
most squealing of laughs.

" You see how I begin," she said, and danced
over the floor and swung round and looked at
them, and doubled herself up to scream and
laugh again.

There was something so mocking and pro-
voking about the creature that Gurdon, laugh-
ing, but tingling curiously in a way he did not
stop to understand, jumped up from the divan
and caught her and said —

" I'm going to box your ears, you saucy child !"
He gave her two light pats on each side of her
head, took her by the elbows firmly, and said,
"Now, are you sorry? Not a bit?" She was
tremendously pretty. " "Will you do it again ?"

"No, I just won't," she said demurely, but
with a nod of such shrewdness that Leighton
fell to guffawing in the corner.

"Voyons, mes enfants, — du cafe!" shouted
Arsenie from the stove, and brought forward a
little tray.

The girl they had called Lemuel flew round
the studio and sat on the floor beside Robbie,
pretending to laugh when she looked at Gurdon,
and throwing her dress skirt over her head as
she rocked about in mock paroxysms. Mark's

24 GALLIA.

mind was full of bewilderment as he took his
place in this strange circle. Who was this wild
creature, a child and not a child? How was
she with Leighton and Arsenie? He looked
from one to the other of them, intending to ask
about her, but they were playing ball with the
little white dog, and Lemuel's round eyes were
peeping at him from under her skirt hem.

"I think we'd better not say who you are;
you've behaved yourself so disgracefully," Leigh-
ton just then said, looking over his shoulder.
" She is tbe daughter of our friend with the beau
torse, and she is called young Lemuel."

" Moi, aussi," she began to scream, but Robbie
put his hand out and caught her by the hair,
and they played together till they nearly upset
the coffee. Gurdon took up Lu-lu and fingered
the beast's big bow, while he wondered what
old Mrs. Leighton would make of the only ele-
ment that had been wanting in her picture of
Robbie's surroundings.

CHAPTER IV.

It was not only to look after Eobbie Leigh-
ton, and oblige that young man's grandmother
that Gurdon had come to Paris. A notable
feature of his mind was a peculiar power of
forming small hut effective combinations; the
power was now more than a natural faculty.
Mark had discovered, early in life, that he had
such a quality, and he had had many opportuni-
ties of becoming impressed with a sense of its use-
fulness ; he therefore determined to develop it as
another man might decide to develop his talent
for music or sculpture. On the principle that the
greater includes the less, Gurdon, while capable of
forming a scheme of very respectable magnitude,
was also sensible of the importance of the smallest
details, and made a practice of never neglecting
them. You might have met Gurdon anywhere,
— at dinner, in a train, between the acts, on a
racecourse, in the cabin of a steamer, — and after
half-an-hour's conversation you would have put
him down merely as an excellent specimen
of the average man; in which judgment you
would have been mistaken. For this very power
I speak of is by no means part of the average
man's equipment, and it was just this and noth-

B 3 25

26 GALLIA.

ing else that distinguished Mark from the crowd.
It is very habitual to use the phrase regarding a
young man that he must " make a career for
himself" ; and there is nothing quite so rare as
to see the young man who has done it. Circum-
stances, when not relatives or an accident of
birth, are tbe usual agents in the manufacture of
this article; and to come across the man who,
not having either the relatives or the accident
of birth, and not being favoured by the circum-
stances, has deliberately set to work to construct
the circumstances, to connect them with the
motor engine of his own will, and, having set
the whole a-going, to contrive that career shall
be the result, — to come across such a man is to
have found something approaching the human
equivalent of a blue rose.

Gurdon's father had been an engineer, and a
fairly successful one, too ; his mother a curate's
daughter, who to the single effort of giving birth
to him had added the second of selecting his
Christian name, and then died. Mark always
did his mother justice when he thought of her.
He was far too keen and fair-minded not to see
that she had done very well by him; she had
given him a splendid constitution, a very nice
nose, which was not too suggestive of talent to
be handsome and even aristocratic, and a very
useful kind of name. She might just as easily
have called him Jeremiah — for she was the

GALLIA. 27

daughter of a Low-Church curate who still read
in the Old Testament, and had brought his
daughter up to do likewise. He knew that he
owed a great deal to his mother, and he forgave
her handsomely for the fine and slightly rip-
pled hair which had also been of her bestowal,
since on the whole it lay very flat. There is
nothing in his personal appearance that a man
resents more fiercely than a tendency to curl or
crinkle in his hair.

His father's was a life of change and chance.
Sometimes there was more money than at other
times, and it had been in one of their brightest
moments that young Mark's four years at Rugby
were paid for. Then came the French experi-
ence, and while his father held a post as man-
ager of some extremely expensive and compli-
cated wine-pressing machinery, Mark had crossed
the Bordeaux Jardin Public four times daily, on
his way to and from the Lycee. French, even
when acquired in Bordeaux, is a tremendous
arrow in a young man's quiver when he comes
to shoot at a mark in the world; and young
Gurdon took to it like a duck to water, and all
his life would drop into a French book for pref-
erence; and having sat through one fortnight
of performances at the Francais, arose and left
the building with an exquisitely chastened accent,
which never forsook him. Even as it is custom-
ary to look for no grit in the schoolboy who

28 GALLIA.

keeps his nails clean, so the morals of the
Englishman who speaks French like a native
are very justifiably doubted by people of experi-
ence ; but on both these points an exception may
perhaps be claimed in favour of Mark. When
Gurdon, senior, was sent to put up and superin-
tend certain brewing plant at Munich, his son
naturally accompanied him, and thereupon set
himself to conquer first his intuitive antipathy to
the Germans, and then his no less fierce objec-
tion to their declensions, with the result that his
midday Bairisch suited him as well as his pre-
vious Medoc had done, and he thought out for
himself, combining an immense dispassionate-
ness with the hot logical fervour of two and
twenty, the Franco-German question, to his
own complete consequent peace of mind in this
matter.

The Munich life appearing for the time a per-
manency (if such a misuse of terms he for-
givable), Mark came to England and to Oxford
with an education so peculiar, and in some re-
spects so in advance of that of men of his age,
that he felt moderately certain of making his
exams, for his chosen career, and entering the
Civil Service with good numbers. He found he
had to work harder than he had expected, but,
nevertheless, events fell out to his satisfaction,
and his first reverse came after he had acquired
a much-yearned-for stool in the Colonial Office.

GALLIA. 29

It was the death of his father. All Mark's life
had been so matter of fact thus far that he was
dismayed to find how much he regretted the
man who, in life, had meant very little to him.
He put on his decorously correct mourning with
a puzzled brow, and then went to look after the
investment of the £1500 which was all the money
he had to expect as capital. His father had been
his only relative ; he was now alone in the world
— without the least sense of loneliness ; the curi-
ous sadness that would fall upon him when he
laid down the afternoon paper, when he waited
for the next course of the abominable club din-
ner, when he looked across the water in St.
James's Park towards that circle of buildings in
which his hopes and his future lay — seemed to
him inexplicable, because illogical. But in time
the sadness wore away, and only the puzzled
remembrance of it stirred sometimes in his brain.

It was characteristic of Mark that he invested
that £1500 as it stood.

" There may be a time when I shall want just
such a sum of money for some particular step in
my career," he told himself; and perhaps he
phrased it, There shall be a time, and not, There
may be.

And then the dull months went over, painted

only by the minute social advances the young

man made. The friendship of Robbie Leighton

had introduced him to a circle which ideally

3*

30 GALLIA.

represented the desire of his very" wide-awake
dreams ; this might be looked upon as one of the
adventitious circumstances mentioned before, but
how many young men could have made any
capital out of a single afternoon call, with a
number of other people in the room ?

It was Mark's own cleverness that told him
to make a conversational opportunity, not for
himself, but for his brilliant hostess — and to
make it in Trench. "When he thought over the
visit, he discovered that beyond " How do you
do ?" and " Good-bye," it was his unique utter-
ance in that drawing-room; but it drew from
Mrs. Leighton a very delightful sort of com-
mand to Robbie to tell Gurdon to call upon her,
and Mark never misled himself as to its impor-
tance.

So much for Mark's character ; his appearance
has been indicated. As to his belief, it was con-
cretely rooted in himself, and his creed was that
it behoved a man — not every man, but such a
man as himself — to succeed. Success on the one
hand implies a failure somewhere or of some
one or the other. Mark quite saw the admi-
rable justice of this. Some people of course had
to fail, it was what they were intended for and it
suited them, only he was not of these. He was
born to be a successful, honourable, gentlemanly,
" decent" kind of fellow, just as some men were
born to be low, ruffianly devils, or seedy, piti-

GALLIA. 31

able failures. As he had a decidedly kind heart,
and wouldn't have hurt a fly, he thought it fear-
fully hard on them, and would like to have given
them each a sovereign, poor chaps. This, in
rough outline, was Mark's ethics.

So he stood, fresh and handsome, on the steps
of the Lille et d' Albion, pulling on a pair of
French Suede gloves, and prepared to pursue
his second object in coming to Paris. It was
about eleven o'clock, so he stepped out for Neal
and a glimpse of yesterday's Times; at twelve
it would, be time to look up some of the men at
the Embassy; they would have had time to
address about five envelopes apiece, and would
be ready for luncheon. In the afternoon he was
going to Auteuil to see St. Crispin, the marvel-
lous colt belonging to his friend the Marquis de
Mont Voisin, come in fourth, that being the
place assigned inevitably to young Mont Voisin's
horses. He owed this very desirable acquaint
ance also to Mrs. Leighton. The old Marquise
having been a friend of her girlhood, it was
natural that when the boy came to London she
should have made a little dinner for him, and
collected such young men as she thought he
would like to meet. Mont Voisin spoke just as
little and just as much English as every other
Frenchman, and it had fallen to the lucky Gur-
don to show him London, and answer all his
questions in his own tongue. A card discreetly

32 GALLIA.

left at the H6tel Mont Voisin on his way to
Leighton at the studio had procured for Gurdon
a cordial invitation to "team down" (this was
how Mont Voisin put it, and it is certain he
imagined himself to be employing an extremely
showy bit of London slang) on his coach.

Now it was an annoying thing to Gurdon that,
as he conscientiously read his Times, there should
crop up continually the insufferable remembrance
of that half-hour in Leighton's studio. For one
thing, the cropping-up of recollections was not
what he was accustomed to expect of his own
mind; for another, they interfered materially
with the digest of the South African intelligence
which he was bent on making. It was part of
Gurdon's daily routine to read first the news of
the great Empire whose ends he was called upon
in the humblest of fashions to serve, then to
think about them, and finally to know what he
thought about them. He had the clearest pos-
sible head. One thing at once, and that thing
thoroughly, was his rdle ; but if a man is to be
disturbed by the recurrence of an atmosphere,
such as the atmosphere of the studio, and that
atmosphere accompanied by a sensation, such a
sensation as the insolent kiss of a minx of a girl,
how in the world is he to reflect upon the rights
and wrongs of the Swazis ? Gurdon had barely
got rid of this problem when he set out for the
Legation.

CHAPTER V.

" Hullo, that can't be ! By Jove, it is, though !
I say, here comes Miss Essex."

The two men were walking across the Jardin
du Luxembourg after a dejeuner at the H6tel
Foyot, for which Gurdon had paid an exceed-
ingly round number of francs, and it was of
course Robbie Leighton whose careless youth
still expressed itself in a number of such ejacu-
lations. Gurdon saw a tall girl coming towards
them in the sunshine that filtered through the
plane trees; he noticed that she was fair and
slim and English; he moved his stick into his
other hand, so as to be ready to take his hat off;
and he also observed the light and colour that
seemed to overspread his friend's face. As
for Robbie, he saw the pompons of the planes
patterned black upon a pale sky dappled in
opaline colours of winter clearness ; he heard the
firm, sharp beat of her slim feet upon the orange
path, and felt something severe and virginal and
beautiful in. her walk ; and then he swept his hat
from his head in an ardour of smiles, which was
made very noticeable by the correct courtesy of
Gurdon's gesture. The next instant both men

34 GALLIA.

came to a halt, brief enough, hut sharp and
simultaneous, amazement, in a dull colour of
mounting blood, painting itself in their faces.
The girl had cut Leighton dead. It had been
clear, intentional, and effective. The pale, fair
face had seemed a little paler as she passed them
by, the clear blue eyes had fixed a quiet gaze
between their shoulders.

" In God's name !" began Leighton, rather
gaspingly, as they settled into a vacant seat,
" In God's name, what can she mean ?"

"You appear to have mistaken the lady,"
Gurdon said, with a faint sarcasm below the
lightness of his tone.

" Mistaken her ? "Well, if anything was plain,
it was that she knew me ! "What in the world
has happened ?"

" Did you Bay Essex ? Not the sister of Dark
Essex, of Balliol, by any chance ?"

" By every certainty. Last year he wrote and
told me she was coming out, and asked me to
be of use to her in any way I could. I have
been of use to her in a hundred ways, and we've
been the best of friends. . . . Some brute has
been telling lies about me !" Leighton wound up
in a voice of sudden passion.

"Or perhaps the truth?" Gurdon had the
kind of personal courage which can say a little
thing like that.

" Oh, you mean — Arsenie ?"

GALLIA. 35

Their eyes met as Leighton turned and looked
at Mark. It appeared to be an opportunity to
get at his friend's mind on this subject; it
appeared to be the moment for doing Mrs.
Leighton a favour.

" My dear fellow," Gurdon began in expostula-
tory cordiality, " this art circle of yours up here
is a very small thing, and it is not to be expected
that the light of day is to be screened off from
one especial building in the Passage des Favor-
ites. What in the world have you hoped for?
Did you mean these people who frequent the
same studio as yourself all day, not to know this
thing ? Really, Leighton, you are not going to
tell me you were not prepared for an incident of
this kind ?"

" Prepared for it ?" cried Robbie. " Prepared
to have Margaret Essex cut me as though I were
a blackguard not fit to be spoken to, or to have
her eyes rest on ? "Would you have been pre-
pared for it 1"

Leighton was snorting with indignation and a
sense of outraged virtue.

" Of course I should have been ; always sup-
posing I could have contrived so idiotic a situa-
tion for myself. You can't reckon without public
opinion and people's idea of life. Such women
as Miss Essex are public opinion, and while they
inhabit the same part of Paris as yourself, you
must count them in your schemes. Why should

36 GALLIA.

Miss Essex's views be any different here from
what they would be in London ?"

Leighton sank together in a dismayed and per-
plexed heap, and Mark continued to talk over
the ruins without apparently noticing the havoc
he was causing. " It must be one thing or the
other, and you have to choose which," he con-
cluded presently, after a monologue to which
Robbie had given gloomy and disgusted atten-
tion. " Besides, I know the sort of woman Miss
Essex is ; it was written all over her — in her walk,
her face, the swing of her gown." Poor Robbie
had only read the poetry of these elements.
" You can't mistake them. Made of a very fine
material, but cold and inhuman as the grave
itself." He leaned back complacently, folding
his arms. " Measuring all men with a measure,
and that measure made of wrought steel."

" Rot !" said Leighton simply, and with that
got up, and made as though to pursue his way
towards the studio.

There was a silence of several minutes. Even
when they paused again while Gurdon bought
a couple of bunches of violets at the gate of the
Jardin, no word was spoken.

It was Leighton who broke the silence, and
his voice was careless and gay again. " We'll
go and sit in the courtyard and have a yarn with
old Lemuel; he isn't sitting to-day, and you'll
find him a queer old chap." The meeting with

GALLIA. 37

Miss Essex was not apparently to colour the
whole afternoon, and Gurdon caught himself
wondering how deep it had gone with Leighton.
"I thought so, there he is, lifting weights just
to show off to the men."

The old Hercules was dressed in seedy black,
wearing a sombrero which made him handsomer
and more picturesque than ever. He had a
couple of big iron bars in his hands with balls at
the ends of them, and he was raising these above
his head and twirling them in the air. Gathered
round him just outside the sculpture studio,
upon the greenish-grey flagstones, were some
of the men students, waiting for the afternoon
work to begin. It was a Monday afternoon, and
the broad stone steps that led down into the
courtyard were covered with Italians, women
in garish aprons, head-cloths, and skirts; men,
in more or less ragged everyday clothes, carried
bundles which contained costumes of various
sorts. Children, all with immense black eyes in
gingerbread-coloured faces, tumbled about like
guinea-pigs, sang and screamed, or were por-
tentously still and silent, according as they
were accompanied by an elder sister of some
nine summers or not.

To the outsider it was a very picturesque scene.
To the student it was Monday afternoon.

" You must have been painted an immense
number of times, Mr. Lemuel, you're so com-

4

38 GALLIA.

pletely the classic type," Gurdon said politely to
the old man, who had put down his weights
and was wiping his hroad, fine hrow.

" Well, I may say I have !" the Hercules re-
plied in a remarkably small, insignificant voice.
" Munkacszy's design for the ceiling of an au-
dience hall at the Champ de Mars last year —
I was the Zeus in that. You will have seen
Laurent's fresco at the Pantheon ? I am there.
I posed for three figures there and for the head
of one. Oh, and in the last ten years — yes!
That group of the new Ajax — if you were at
the Salon three years ago, you might have seen
it — it created a great sensation because poor
young Suvain shot himself beside it on varnish-
ing day; it was his, you know, and they hadn't
given him the place he expected. I worked
seven months with him for that. It was a
grand thing."

Insensibly, as they talked, they had been
moving in the direction of the street, and before
he knew it, Mark found himself pushing open
the swing-door of the marchand de vin at the
corner.

"But before this part of your career, what
were you engaged in?" he asked, after little
glasses had been handed them.

" Ah, before that I was a sculptor myself, and
slapped clay with as good a will as any."

The old man's face darkened, and his small

GALLIA. 39

voice sounded as though the Amer Picou had
got into it too.

" But I never made anything of it, and I had
a wife and family to keep."

Good heavens! it was this man's daughter
Gurdon rememhered.

" And so many asked me to pose — for high
terms too — that I saw I could do better at it."

Mark suspected a fine talent for idleness in this
powerful old Jove, but he only said, " Sculpture
ought to be a fine thing for the muscles."

"Ah, my muscles were made before ever I
saw a mallet or dreamed of touching one. You
must make the muscles when they're young, sir,
and they'll never quite disappear. Boxing made
mine, when I was at the University. A per-
former with the gloves yourself, perhaps ?"

Gurdon said he was fond of it, but more for
the exercise than the science.

"I lead a fairly sedentary life, — I'm in a
Government office — and I find an hour three
times a week keeps me wonderfully fit," he
added in a conversational way, and perhaps
impelled to give some confidence about himself
as a means of putting himself on an equality
with the old man.

" It is long since I darkened those doors," old
Lemuel said, slowly and musingly. ""Who
knows, you may be sitting in the same seat."

" You were — ?" Gurdon began in some surprise.

40 GALLIA.

The white head nodded slowly several times.
Gurdon got the idea that the Paris model did
not wish to talk about those days. He was
wrong: there was nothing old Lemuel didn't
want to talk about.

" I had a sort of an ambition once, — oh, I've
seen the folly of it long since, — and it was out
of place there."

This made Mark uncomfortable. He called
sharply to have their glasses filled again, and,
with his brows knitting, quickly asked Lemuel
what he meant ?

" Well, I wanted to get on, you see ; the whole
thing was too slow for me. I'd "no money and
precious little interest, and — I wanted to marry."
He stopped, but Gurdon accepted this pause in
silence, and, after putting his lips to his glass, the
old model went on musingly. " Yes, I wanted
to marry ; ah, it's a very long while ago, that !
I had energy, I had some push about me then.
A salary on a crawling scale, with a pension at
the end of it, seemed to me too poor a thing to
sit down and wait for. I thought I might do
something to get myself into notice. What was
the use of my being one of hundreds whose
names were unknown except to their immediate
superiors in office and to the hall porter? A
mere coral insect, one of thousands, raising a
mountain reef of pink tape !"

Mark's lips folded themselves in and yet more

GALLIA. 41

tightly in. He was young enough, although
twenty-eight years of age, to be surprised, to
imagine something of a coincidence about his
meeting with this man, about the similarity in
his own feelings now and that other Government
clerk's then. He looked rather fixedly at old
Lemuel's physique, the set of his neck upon his
shoulders, the pose of his head. He imagined
him young ; to look at he must have been a man
in a thousand ; his manner, too, was smooth, easy,
and dignified. Years of being bandied about in
a studio had given little unfamiliar touches of
servility to it in places ; but these still struck
oddly and incongruously upon the ear, and in no
wise seemed natural to the man. Had not old
Lemuel of the beau torse and the Paris studios
had more in his favour thirty years ago than he,
Gurdon, at this moment? Mark was not by
any means a man of sentiment; it was not so
much tbat he despised it as that it was the very
last attitude his mind was likely to assume, but
no human being can be wholly without this
impractical quality, and Gurdon had, of course, a
little of it — so little that it was just enough for
himself. His clear head showed him that the
points in which he was superior to the young
man Lemuel must once have been, were not
upon the surface, were not easily discoverable.
And the conversation made the more dent upon
his brain, because, only the evening before, driv-
4*

42 GALLIA.

ing home upon the box-seat of Mont Voisin's
coach, he had thought to himself, " I am not
getting on." With the upper octave of his brain
he was discussing with the Marquis the breed of
English racehorses and the inferiority of French
blood ; then there had come rushing to him on
the sharp wind that tightened the skin upon his
face, the sudden thought, " I am not getting on,"
and at once the deeper octave had played with
variations upon this theme. Mark had had a
socially successful afternoon, following upon a
socially successful luncheon ; if he had been
thinking about himself at all, he might have
been thinking that, on the whole, he was doing
very fairly well. But he liked racing, and he
liked Mont Voisin's Paris chatter, and he had not
been thinking about himself at all. Then the
evening breeze had brought him that uncomfort-
able thought ; so clear and crisp and definite that
it had the effect upon him of the utterance of a
being who knows better than one's self. An
argumentative fellow in the main, Mark didn't
argue with this impersonal dictum ; he tried his
best to discover upon what collocation of half-
liquid ideas it had been based, but he could trace
none of these, although he searched and filtered
his brain to the utmost.

Failing this, he had set himself to sum up his
position, and had, so to speak, heaved a mental
log to determine by dead reckoning at least his

GALLIA. 43

rate of professional progress. A very few min-
utes served to show him that the dictum could
be justified. What would the next year bring
him, in all likelihood? At the best, if the
Government held on, chance might put him
ahead of some senior. His chief, Lord Hames-
thwaite, might perceive him more nearly, might
suspect his ability, might differentiate him, in
his own mind, from his fellows. Ah, how much
that differentiation would mean ! That was, at
the best, the very best. At the worst ? At the
worst, he would dine out a little oftener, meet
a few more important people, be caught up to
the paradise of Lady Hamesthwaite's Wednes-
day dinners. That was all. Quite certainly he
was not getting on.

The thoughts engendered by that dictum were
in no way dissipated or diluted in their dis-
comforting strength by an evening at the the-
atre. A morning at the Cluny and Pantheon,
which he had always previously failed to see, and
to which Leighton now dragged him — these also
were powerless to lead his thoughts from a
more or less profitless contemplation of his own
future. Now, having chanced against a queer
old studio-character, that the conversation should
take this very turn, and his companion appear in
the shocking character of a disappointed ap-
pointment-seeker, with a background which, in
a tray full of human experiences could not be

44 GALLIA.

distinguished from his own, was sufficiently dis-
quieting. The thoughts set flowing by old
Lemuel's brief confidences had so absorbed
Mark's attention that he missed even a sentence
or two of the slow, musing talk. The soft, small
voice of the man, his fixed eyes, the backward
throw of his big head, with its cover of shining
white curls and tangles — all these things made
up the impression that he was unwinding his
thoughts from the silver cobwebs of the past.

" Get to know something ; — yes, that is the
scheme, I was right so far ; — get to know some-
thing and don't print it. The mistake was that
I did."

It was this phrase, very emphatically spoken,
which captured and led back Gurdon's excursive
mind. He was just going to put a question,
when the door burst open and Leighton came in
with a rush.

" Gad, I thought as much !" he exclaimed,
shouldering up to them past a group of blue cotton
ouvriers. "When in doubt as to old Lemuel's
whereabouts, try the wine-shop, eh ?" He caught
the old man a whack on his big shoulder, and
laughed as he ordered a little glass for himself.

When the Marmorweib of romantic legend
felt the first pink shaft of morning sunlight on
her stony bosom, the life that night and the green
moonbeams had given her stopped suddenly, and
so long as the sun shone she was cold upon her

GALLIA. 45

pedestal. This change meant a moment of keen
pain for her, we may fancy. There was a blast-
ing touch of the morning about young Leighton
and his greeting, and it wrought some such
change in old Lemuel. On Gurdon, too, it was
not lost. Something forbade him saying, " "We
were speaking of early days," or anything of the
kind. He was silent. The whole foregoing
conversation began to seem unreal and shadowy.
It was to be remembered often at other times ;
but now he listened with an odd expression in his
face as Robbie announced that he was off work
for the afternoon ; the new model was too vile
for anything, and he wasn't going to paint her.
No modelling, just a hundred-weight or two of
Frankforterwurst without the spice.

" Look here, I'll make a sketch of you instead,
if you like. There's a line in your jaw that I
like, rather."

" All right. How long will it take ?" asked
Mark.

" Oh, depends ; say an hour or two, and then
we'll go over the river and dine. Lemuel, can we
go up to your place ? There's a very fair light
there, and I don't suppose little Lem will think
it an intrusion."

" She's not at home, she's sitting for Carlo
Deo's wood-nymph. You're very welcome."

In a few minutes they were mounting the five
flights to the old model's appartement.

CHAPTER VI.

The twenty years between Mrs. Leighton and
her stepsister, Lady Hamesthwaite, made no sort
of difference to their friendship, which was of
the closest possible kind, but it would have been
very difficult for an outsider to discover in what
the very distinct bond between the two women
consisted.

It is almost unusual for relations to come into
any such close connection as will make them
deep and lasting friends. But, a good way back
in Julia Hamesthwaite's life, there had been a
moment at which Mrs. Leighton had played the
part of a friend, rather than that of a half-sister,
and the younger woman never forgot it. She
owed her very excellent marriage to Mrs. Leigh-
ton; or, to speak more clearly, she owed her
escape from a very unfortunate marriage to that
sympathising and clever woman. The incident
has nothing to do with this story, and need not
be detailed. But Lady Hamesthwaite, fitted in
every way to be the wife of a distinguished ser-
vant of the Crown, had as nearly as possible
missed this brilliant vocation, and she owed it to
her half-sister that she had quite not missed it.

The intercourse between the house in Corn-
46

GALLIA. 47

wall Gardens and the house in Grosvenor Place
was very constant and very cordial, and it was
to be expected that, the very afternoon of the
Hamesthwaites' return to London from their
country place, Mrs. Leighton should have looked
in to greet her sister Julia.

" And you know I have Gallia with me," Lady
Hamesthwaite had said, as they sat over their
tea in the smallest of the tiresomely immense
drawing-rooms which seemed fitted for nothing
but big political receptions. "It is not often
that I am so fortunate." A little laugh followed
this remark ; it was certainly remarkably seldom
that this mother and daughter could be found
together.

" I hope she is in, and that she will be coming
down. I take the deepest interest in Gallia,"
Mrs. Leighton said quickly.

" You know that you are a little responsible
for her peculiarities ; it was you who advised me
always to let her have her own way, and dis-
pose of herself as she pleased."

" It was my advice for the time being ; you
would have done no good by thwarting Gallia
when she chose her path years ago. She has
been lost to us both since then."

Lady Hamesthwaite hastened to cover with a
smile the sigh that involuntarily escaped her.

"But — I think Gallia will come home. My
theory is that the modern girl has also a crop of

48 GALLIA.

wild oats to sow ; not the usual sort, of course, —
JDieu soit beni — but wild oats nevertheless. Per-
haps she will have finished soon, and then, you
will see, Gallia will come home."

There was confidence and reassurance always
to be found in Mrs. Leighton's remarks. She
had lived a long time with her eyes open and
seen many things, and she was usually right in
what she predicted.

The little pause that fell between the two
women was broken in upon by a step crossing
the parquet of an adjoining floor; a second
later Gallia Hamesthwaite appeared beside a
curtained archway.

" How do you do, Aunt Celia ?" she said,
coming to kiss the old lady on the cheek.

Mrs. Leighton took both her hands, and
smiled up at her with a penetrative and slightly
interrogative smile.

"Whether she was satisfied or not with the
inspection did not appear. It had the effect of
annoying Gallia excessively. She turned to her
mother.

" Have the afternoon papers come yet ?"

" I don't know, dear, but ring and ask Bowles ;
they are usually sent up to my dressing-room,
you know."

"Do you not think mother looking very
well?" Gallia began, after she had rung the
bell. " I do ; I can't imagine why she should

GALLIA. 49

come rushing up here now, of all times in the
year, when London never fails to give her that
bronchial trouble."

" Her social duties, my dear" — Mrs. Leighton
began.

" But she has no social duties. Of course, if
she were anyone else, and I were someone quite
different, she would have to get me married and
all that, but as it is — Come, it must be ad-
mitted that I have lifted the burden of social
duties pretty thoroughly off mother's back.
Thank you, but, Bowles, please send out for the
other papers, and bring them to me when they
come."

A very few minutes later she retired to the
window with a sheaf of journals, and was en-
tirely lost to the conversation at the other side
of the room.

"Do you think she is on the way home?"
asked Lady Hamesthwaite, a little wistfully.

" She is still very young, and proportionately
earnest. She will slough this skin in time, but
one always fears a little what skin will be found
underneath."

The crackle of the newspapers at the window
covered the clear, precise tones of Mrs. Leigh-
ton's voice, and Gallia read on undisturbed.

" Anything of interest, darling ?" Lady Hames-
thwaite called out presently.

" Yes, there is some rather good correspond-
c d 5

50 GALLIA.

ence about — but you wouldn't care to hear about
it."

" Tell us what is interesting you, dear Gallia,"
her Aunt Celia said, with bland encouragement.

Gallia did not lay down her paper, but in a
tone of level indifference replied, " There is an
agitation about the State regulation of vice."

"My dearest child!" "Dear Gallia!" came
from the ladies on the sofa.

" But I don't suppose it will come to anything.
One man very justly observes that the result of
it has been the abolition of regulation, not the
abolition of vice. I wonder who he is. He
writes rather well."

Mrs. Leighton got up and went over to the
window with her soft, elegant step ; she put the
fine crinkled hand Gurdon had kissed upon the
girl's head, and sank upon the other end of the
settee.

" Dear Gallia, I'm not an illiberal old woman,
now am I ?" she said, with a delightfully light
French note in her voice.

Gallia looked quietly into her face.

" I hardly know. I'm not good at summing
up people, Aunt Celia."

"Well, I will make you a little proposition,
and you shall judge at the end of it if I am
illiberal in my opinions."

Gallia's lip curled to a smile — a very old smile
for so young a face.

GALLIA. 51

" Ah, you are going to say" —

" I think you will find I am not going to say
that," Mrs. Leighton interrupted humorously.
" I am not going to say it is not a fit subject for
you to read about or think about. I am only
going to suggest that it is a waste of time —
your valuable time" — her voice was very serious
now — " to make up your mind upon so exceed-
ingly complicated a subject as this one," tapping
the paper with her taper old fingers, " for the
simple reason that you are unable to assist its
settlement one way or the other! That's all.
Now?"

" But, auntie, how can you say I am unable to
assist its settlement? I can't make the State
do this or that, — I couldn't even cause father
to support a Bill, — but I, in my own person,
must read about and think about it, because
it is a question that only girls can settle ulti-
mately."

Mrs. Leighton was infinitely too tactful to
demur to this sweeping statement. She paused
for a moment, trying to think what it would be
best to say.

" One likes to know the amount of one's in-
debtedness to people," Gallia went on, without
enthusiasm, but simply and firmly. "I could
not be happy — I mean that I could not have a
feeling of self-respect — unless I had estimated
just the amount of my debt to that class of

52 GALLIA.

society which assures my class a good deal of its
immunity."

There was a terrible, portentous pause.

" I think, dear, if you knew how much phrases
of that kind can hurt and distress other women
who have — who have striven to play their part
of wife and mother well, you would perhaps
reserve them.""

It was Lady Hamesthwaite who came up and
made this very gentle remark, through the curls
that hung over her daughter's ear. Then she
dropped a kiss upon the curls and moved away
through the big drawing-rooms.

Gallia flew after her and caught her, and
rubbed away the two tears that were pausing at
the top of the pretty, delicately-coloured cheeks.

" Dearest mother, don't you misunderstand me,
for Heaven's sake ! I was a fool to speak as I
did to Aunt Celia, — one always is a fool to say
what one thinks about anything, — but you know,
mother, I never trouble you with my views upon
these, or any other of the subjects that puzzle
me. Whoever they may concern, they do not
touch you in the very least ! How you can have
found any offence to yourself, in your — in your
delightful position, in what I said, beats me
altogether. I wasn't talking about wives and
mothers — I was talking about" —

"Don't, dear Gallia! it distresses me so much!"

" I wasn't going to say anything then, I wasn't

GALLIA. 53

really !" Gallia explained, with childlike eager-
ness. " I only want to say that wives and
mothers were as far from my thoughts as pigs
and whistles. I won't attempt to tell you what I
did mean. I won't refer to it again. Auntie
Celia is not like you ; she pretends to know the
world, — yes, she has, I know, she has lived a very
long time in it in a measure, — and she leads me
into argument, and then I am idiot enough to say
what I think, and sometimes idiot enough to
refer to something that is true ! But never mind
that; it shan't happen again if I can help it.
Only, mother, don't you be distressed. I can't
bear that. Do me the justice, mother, to say I
don't bother you with such subjects," she pleaded
in genuine distress, and with the most single-
minded pursuit of her subject, she blundered
into yet another pitfall, as youth will.

" I never, never confide any difficult thoughts
to you on the subjects over which I am really
puzzling — now do I ?"

Unlike her sister, Lady Hamesthwaite had no
great sense of humour, or she would have noted
the pathetic absurdity of her daughter's apology
for having hurt her feelings. As it was, she saw
and felt the pathos of the stab conveyed in this
last remark, which Gallia was so eager to drive
home, but not the absurdity of her doing so at
such a moment. It was but too true that Gallia
never confided to her mother the thoughts that
6*

54 GALLIA.

really occupied her extraordinary brain, and that
such peace of mind as Lady Hamesthwaite en-
joyed regarding her daughter sprang from this
very reserve.

" I am angry with Aunt Celia for driving me
into saying such things before mother ! It was
abominable of me to do it, anyhow. I have
broken my record that I meant so hard to keep.
I always recognised mother's unfitness for any
discussion of serious moral problems, and yet
the first worldly-minded old woman who comes
along with a cambric bandage for my weasel
eyes, irritates me into wounding mother with an
expression of my views about realities. It's too
disgusting. It's shown me how little self-control
I've got, so it may do good that way ; but — I'm
angry with Aunt Celia all the same."

In some such channel as that Gallia's thoughts
were running when her mother had kissed her
and smiled before rejoining Mrs. Leighton.

" I wonder, is there anything so difficult as to
be a good mother now-a-days?" Lady Hames-
thwaite said, with a sad little smile, as she felt
her sister's arm go round her waist with a com-
forting pressure. "But you must forgive dear
Gallia," she went on quickly, with that beautiful
instinct of protection that few mothers seem to
be without, in spite of their growing difficulties
and trials. " She is exceedingly penitent about
her want of tact. Gallia has a great feeling for

GALLIA. 55

tact, and — and for propriety. I know she is
really grieved to have introduced so unsuitable a
topic."

Mrs. Leighton could not forbear a smile.

" If one had any doubt as to what century one
were living in, it would be cleared up by the
occurrence of such an incident as this !" she said,
with the little light French turn in her voice
again. "What is dear Gallia penitent about?
About having discussed an impossible subject
before her mother! Ah, once it was another
way, and we had to whisper behind our fans for
fear the shell ears of little daughters caught a
murmur of the coarse tide of life. Ay de mi!
which is better — or which is worse? But you
are right, Julia — Gallia is still a long way from
home."

" I think — although I don't understand her —
still I think that my sympathy is of use to her.
I began a long time ago to let her go her own
way. I cannot draw back now. Sometimes it
seems long to wait for her, but I have never lost
her love, and even her curious care of me is very
sweet sometimes. Yes, I know she will come
back some day."

" You are the sweetest mother-woman in the
world, my Julia," Mrs. Leighton said, kissing
her, and noticing with apprehension a moisture
in her own carefully-pencilled eyes. " Good-
bye, dear. Don't forget you and Gerald are

56 GALLIA.

dining with me on Thursday. "Would Gallia
come, I wonder ? If she will, I shall be de-
lighted. Let me know in the morning, and an-
other man shall be found."

" She may come home," Mrs. Leighton said
reflectively, as she lay back in her victoria, " but
I fear she'll find veal a rather insipid staple after
the modern style of husk."

Gallia stood at the window, watching the car-
riage drive away ; her mother had left the room
with Mrs. Leighton, and had not returned to it.
Gallia was alone with the supremely uncomfort-
able feeling not uncommon with her.

To look at, Gallia Hamesthwaite was no or-
dinary girl, but her mind and character were by
no means very uncommon. She was dark and
tall and slender; if her expression had been
simpler, she would have .been extremely attrac-
tive. Her face might have been called beautiful,
by reason of the skin, hair, and eyes — particu-
larly her skin, which was, perhaps, perfect. But
a girl of far less natural beauty would have been
twice as attractive, both to men and women of
average taste. Gallia's very expression was one
we are beginning to know, and, if the truth
must be confessed, to resent a little. A young,
healthy girl, with good features, good temper,
good nature, and good faith, is so delightful an
object, and so welcome in the world, that we are
selfishly annoyed when charming-looking girls

GALLIA. 57

abdicate their right to these qualities, and refuse
the pleasure and satisfaction that resul from
their contemplation. For her height, Gallia's
face and head were classically little, but they
made the strongest impression of divergence
from the ideal of girlhood. Her eyes were
clouded with wonder upon wonder about mat-
ters which have strained the strongest and
toughest brains the world has ever seen. Her
brows forgot to wear the smile-wreaths we have
thought becoming to her years, and knitted
themselves with painful intensity in contempla-
tion of some misty peak of Darien.

All this was the result of her particular sort
of education on her particular nature.

Up till the age of seventeen, Gallia had re-
ceived the best form of home education. The
time that some girls devote to music, she had
devoted to languages, and knew three very well,
besides her own. She had absorbed the same
amount of geography, history, science, and
mathematics that most clever girls do absorb
now-a-days, and none of it had interested the
individual part of her brain. Natural sciences
had arrested her most, and then, unassisted and
unadvised, she made excursions in sociology, and
became enraptured. Social ethics captured her ;
Mill and Herbert Spencer, whom she skimmed
over like a swallow, fired and delighted her. A
year or two later, just when she was to have

58 GALLIA.

come out, she went to Oxford. Her mother
and her father regarded this departure with dis-
may. The daughters of Lady Hamesthwaite's
friends never wanted to do anything of the
kind: why should Gallia? Gallia was essen-
tially a middle-class creature ; her father's father
had been a business man, her mother, the daugh-
ter of a monumentally successful London physi-
cian. Both these grandparents had made places
for themselves in society owing to the possession
of something society had not got, that mixture
of energy and the instinct of success and advance-
ment.

The girls who came to call with their mothers
on Lady Hamesthwaite, — who might have been,
in the nature of things, Gallia's companions,
were utterly remote from her. Sleek creatures,
with small ears, long, oval faces, narrow-fronted
mouths, and smooth-netted heads, they sat there
in their neat, stupidly-imagined clothes, and
were coldly conscious of their unlikeness to
Gallia. This girl's free movements, free play
of feature, free mode of thought, free mode of
dress, — this last brought to better perfection than
all the rest because more easily understood, —
made up an enigma which their blood rather
than their brains divined.

Gallia had developed late; at seventeen she
was a tall girl rather than a young woman ;
thus her head was older than her body, and had

GALLIA. 59

already acquired a brisk, boyish habit of thought.
When femininity descended upon her, there was
a struggle ; she did not want it ; was prepared to
do without it ; found it an added source of puz-
zlement to life, which was already a hot-bed of
complications for her ; and, as all late-developed
women do, resented it fiercely; fought sepa-
rately and subdued every sign of it.

As a child, Gallia had never had a doll ; had
never played at keeping house, teaching school,
having callers, as most other girl-children do.
If there was a baby about, she had shivered and
left the room. Nothing terrified her like the
society of young married women. The least
mention of the semi-prurient subjects so many
women, and even the best-bred women, habitu-
ally discuss, sent her from the scene. In like
manner she disdained as vulgar, though she was
not frightened by, every sign of coquetry in
girls; if she had had girl friends, she could
never, save mockingly and with a curling lip,
have listened to love-confidences. She adored
animals, and they were her nearest companions ;
she doted on natural history, and studied the
strange characteristics of different beasts with
astonishing zest : yet she was so young and raw
and contradictory that the broad facts of nature,
if applied to herself, revolted her to sickness.
She aroused a certain amount of admiration in
the world, but no word of love had been whis-

60 GALLIA.

pered to her even at twenty years of age, when
she had been some time a free-lance at Oxford.
Such is an outline of her character, no uncom-
mon one, as I said before. There are a great
many Gallias in the world now-a-days, and they
are, for the most part, very unhappy people.

CHAPTER VII.

" So this is who you are ?" A dark, tall, thin
young man, with a very handsome face, was
offering his arm to Gallia Hamesthwaite on the
evening of Mrs. Leighton's dinner-party, and he
made this remark in a tone of insolence so effec-
tive and attractive that the girl coloured curiously,
and replied to him with a look of concentrated
dislike ; dislike and something else as well. The
man passed over the dislike and laughed scorn-
fully at the other ingredient, which did not seem
to surprise him.

"I pardon your astonishment at discovering
my parentage," she said lightly. " But you may
consider me a sport ; we can't all take after our
parents, and clever people may have stupid chil-
dren." Gallia hated to find that annoyance, or
some other feeling was making her a little un-
natural.

" I fail — as usual — to apprehend the drift of
your remarks ; my mind is ill fitted to appreciate
such subtleties. But a longing for justice is ever
present with me. My opinion of you is of little
moment, but I had never imagined you so
fatuous a person as the man I discover to be
your father."

6 61

62 GALLIA.

Mr. Essex — it was the very man whom Gurdon
had referred to as Dark Essex of Balliol — let his
words dribble forth with an amount of affecta-
tion almost too dazzling even in the Fellow of a
college.

"You have dropped your serviette already,"
he added, handing it to her. " Don't keep on
doing it, please. Should one eat the soup, here ?
I have only lunched with Mrs. Leighton before."

Gallia reassured him about the soup, and
made absolutely no defence of her father. She
let her eyes wander round the table to see who
composed her aunt's party, for the Hames-
thwaites had been the last arrivals, and dinner
being announced very soon, she had only time
to notice Dark Essex at the other end of the
room, and establish her composure before he
came to take her in. Although she looked
about the table, and went to work naturally
enough with her dinner, she was, in reality,
palpitating with anxiety to hear his next remark.
She had come to know this man at Oxford, at
some lecture, a little over a year ago. Their
meetings had been very irregular, and charac-
terised by some peculiarity. Essex was as re-
actionary as his kind of man always is, and he
had never before come upon a woman without
a trace of coquetry iu her. He didn't believe
in such a woman as a possibility. He was
forced to converse in her own key with Gallia,

GALLIA. 63

but he liked to use her roughly at the same
time. Once he had taken her out in his boat,
and they had spent at least four hours together.
Another time he had come upon her out on a
long walk in the direction of Abingdon, when
he too was going the same way, and they had
gone along together. Once at Abingdon, it
seemed necessary to have some tea, and then
there was no particular occasion to hurry back,
and it was nine o'clock before they reached
Oxford.

When he forgot all his assumed rudeness of
manner, he could be charming. Vain men are
not rare, but a man who well-nigh smothers
himself in a cloak of vanity is less common.
When Essex forgot to be rude, and forgot to
be vain, he was an interesting companion. He
would talk freely on all the subjects that in-
terested Gallia, and treat her opinions with the
same want of deference he would have shown to
a man's. And in all the small ways and man-
ners of life he exercised all the admirable polite-
ness of an ordinary Englishman. It could be
seen that the old-fashioned style of woman was
his ideal, but Gallia did not quarrel with this,
for, sentimentally, the old style of woman was
her ideal. " You cannot," she would say, " make
yourself the old style of woman ; you cannot
interfere with the clock of evolution that is
wound up and goes on in each one of us ; you

64 GALLIA.

cannot arbitrarily put back its hands to the time
of fifty years ago. Some people's clocks go
slower than others, that is all. It isn't that I'm
pleased with my pace, or that I like myself as I
am, but I'm a quick clock."

Very often she and Essex found themselves
plunging about in some such arguments. He
could not free his mind from the single and only
conception of woman of which he was capable,
and he looked on what are called, tiresomely
enough, new developments in women as fresh
forms of wiles, the arts of the nineteenth-century
Eve. All tbis humbugging about at college and
wrangling after " degrees and things" was to him
a part of the misguided artfulness of modern
women. He couldn't believe in women seriously.
Let Gallia talk with her whole soul in her mouth,
he would, at his most intolerable, shake his head
with a smile, — a sort of " My dear, I see through
you" expression, which whipped her up to the
point of longing to hit him. This mental atti-
tude of Essex's is very commonly met with, and
often in men quite brilliantly clever in their own
lines. And the very worst of it is, that they are
never to be convinced. One of two things inevi-
tably happens to such men. Either they marry
the pretty foolish-kitten style of person and say
triumphantly, " Of course I was right; just look
at Mabel, dear little soul !" when they cannot be
contradicted ; or the undying womanhood in the

GALLIA. 65

woman who burns and argues with them falls a
victim to their masculinity, and she spends the
rest of her life, after marrying them, in adapting
or concealing the parts of her nature which
offend the lord god, her husband.

This seems hopeless? Well, it is hopeless.
Look at Gallia's case. She didn't know it, — that
sort of girl never would know it, — but she had
fallen in love with Essex. She had now left
Oxford. There could be no more punting and
no more walks. They had met in society, she
had been introduced as Lord Hamesthwaite's
daughter. Essex had seemed anxious to show
her that he could be even ruder to her in that
capacity than in her other of simple student ; and
the upshot of it all was with God and the Fates.

" You will forgive my silence," he said pres-
ently. " At a dinner one is expected, to amuse
the lady on one's right, and fill up gaps left by
the other man for the lady on one's left, is it not
so ? My left appears to have a healthy appetite,
and is filling up her own gaps, so we may score
her off."

" "Well, then, I claim the amusement due to
the lady on your right," she. exclaimed quickly,
and smiled with a touch of" girlish pleasure.

" I beg you won't look, up at me like that,"
Essex said, with a note of protest. " Have I not
told you before that it would upset my whole
scheme of life to fall in love with you ?"

66 GALLIA.

" And mine."

" Yours — to fall in love with me ?"

" I didn't mean that — and I didn't say it,"
Gallia said, with sudden stubbornness.

" Funny ; now I consider that you both meant
it and said it, but we'll pass that over. Please
bear in mind that I am not to be tampered with,
that's all. "We meet in quite a new fashion ;
the landscape has changed, the figures in the
landscape must change too. "We are in Lon-
don : you on your own ground ; I, because Mrs.
Leighton knew my mother, wanted another man
in a hurry, and heard that I had grown up hand-
some and had a chance of getting disliked into
notice some day."

" "Very well. Then you can indulge me with
a new form of treatment," said Gallia, with a
nod.

"By the way, the man across there, now
gnawing a salt almond, has honoured you with
a number of savagely covetous stares."

" That is Sir Edmund Bruce."

"It is so delightful to be in the society of
some one who is au fait with little social details
of that kind — to a commoner like myself the
greatest treat," said Essex, with exaggerated en-
thusiasm.

" You are simply abominable ; can you never
stop sneering ?"

" I breathe again. If you consider me simply

GALLIA. 67

abominable, I believe you will not — at least not
immediately — fall in love with me ! In the
meantime, I may tell you that you have im-
proved greatly in doing your hair."

" Too flattered !" said Gallia, with a curling
lip, but she experienced a thrill of gratification
all the same.

" Merely justice, I assure you. Have I ever
paid you a compliment 1"

" One !" she looked up and laughed in his face.

" And that was ?— "

" The compliment of disliking me."

A shadow came in the middle of Essex's fore-
head, just between the brows.

" Mr. Essex, we are wondering if you can give
the explanation of Mark Gurdon's sudden flight
to the interior of Africa ?" A very pretty little
woman, Lady Mary Mortimer, fired this sudden
question into the. idle bickering Gallia and Essex
usually maintained.

" Is it really the interior ? When he left, there
was word of Cape Town, and since then rumour
has pushed him farther and farther towards the
tracks of Stanley and others."

" Oh, well, it's somewhere in Africa," Lady
Mary explained easily. " Was it true about his
cough?"

" Surely Gurdon didn't mean us to take that
seriously ? I had no idea it was intended to go
further than his chief."

68 GALLIA.

" Well, he had a cough ! Dear Mrs. Leighton,
you said he had a cough, didn't you ?" applying
in the most plaintive fashion to her hostess.
" And I have always heard the climate of South
Africa was so wonderful for anything of that
kind ! The air there is so extraordinarily dry,
you know."

" Or so extraordinarily moist, Lady Mary ?"
Essex interjected gravely.

" Oh, yes, I believe that was it. Yes, so sin-
gularly moist, you know ; and of course that is
everything in a — in a — bronchial trouble — isn't
that what Mr. Gurdon had ?"

" I can't remember if the cough was in his
throat or in his chest," Mrs. Leighton said, with
affectionate solicitude.

" I fancy it lay about here," said Essex, laying
a finger in the middle of his brow ; " but I don't
think the Colonial Office would mind where it
was."

"You have got to do something for him,
Gerald, when he comes home !" Mrs. Leighton
said warmly. " Mark Gurdon is a young man I
like."

" His future is assured, Celia." Lord Hames-
thwaite made her a little bow ; she kissed the
tips of her fingers to him in return.

" He is not to be kept licking envelopes all his
young days," sbe went on severely. " And when
he comes back from Africa" —

GALLIA. 69

" I wish I knew which part of Africa," Lady
Mary wailed softly.

Lord Hamesthwaite shook his head.

"Ah, I believe he was mistaken in going
there," he said.

" What does he want to endanger his future
and his country's future for, by getting to know
anything about her dependencies ?" Essex said
to Gallia, with a little air of irritation which was
very well done.

Lord Hamesthwaite looked over quickly to
the Oxford man and his daughter, but he did not
make any remark.

" Yes ; I don't see why he needed to go to
Africa," Mrs. Leighton went on.

" His cough," said Lady Mary tenderly.

" He had just been to Paris, too," her hostess
went on, as though this formed an effective
reason against a man's going anywhere. " His
French is delicious — quite the French of my own
day !"

" Talking of Paris, what news is there of
young Robbie?" Lady Hamesthwaite inquired,
disengaging herself dexterously from an elderly
flirtation with a Dean.

"I very seldom hear from Robbie," Mrs.
Leighton replied, with a marked absence of her
usual tact, or a conspicuous display of it.
Everybody at once felt that Robbie had been
" naughty."

70 GALLIA.

" My dear," looking down the table to a very
sweet young woman in white, "have you any
news of my grandson to give us ?"

" The prettiest girl in the room is blushing ;
don't miss it," murmured Essex to his neighbour,
and Gallia craned her neck to see who it was he
distinguished thus.

" There is very little news to give of an' artist
before he has arrived," the prettiest girl said,
in a voice of such beauty as made her most
ordinary utterance a kind of favour. " Mr.
Leighton is to be seen very regularly at the
studio — and — that is all! In the spring" — she
raised the very glistening grey eyes and swept a
glance to Lady Hamesthwaite — " in the spring,
who shall say ?"

" You were speaking, Mrs. Leighton ?" said
the courteous peer on her left.

" No, I think not— was I?"

The peer attacked his souffle with renewed
ardour, wondering what the words " I couldn't
have done it better myself" meant? For those
words he had certainly overheard.

" Do you really think her so pretty ?" Gallia
asked, with an elaborate air of criticism.

"She is not only the most beautiful, she is
the best woman I have been privileged to
know," Essex replied, with a very new ex-
pression, amounting almost to worship, on his
face.

GALLIA. 71

It was no wonder if Gallia Hamesthwaite
looked up at him in interest and surprise.

The smile with which she was so much more
familiar succeeded that new look.

" Don't distress yourself, my dear ; she is my
sister."

" Sometimes, you know, Mr. Essex, — or per-
haps you don't know ? — your rudeness not only
oversteps the bounds of what is permissible —
but it ceases to be amusing."

Gallia turned superbly to the man on her other
hand, who chanced to be an old friend.

" Maurice, you are eating far too much pud-
ding ! Don't," she said, with cordial roughness.

" I wondered when you were going to notice
me," the young man replied ruefully, in a very
high, thin falsetto voice. " I have made no less
than three distinct remarks to you during dinner,
and once I even told you my best story. Not the
one about Gladstone and the muffins, — that was
my best last season,— but the one" —

" I expect I know the one," Gallia remarked
coldly.

" ISo, you can't really ; you've been at Oxford
all the time ! It's the joke they played Eosebery
with his racing-glass. You'll like it awfully.
Look here, I'll tell you now, if you'll shunt
Essex for a bit."

" I'm afraid there isn't time ; I see Aunt Celia
looking at mother. It will keep, won't it ?"

72 GALLIA.

"Yes, if you are really — Oh, this is your
glove, I expect?" Maurice Forrester was still
babbling harmlessly when the ladies left the
room.

" Give it to me, I will take it to Miss Hames-
thwaite," Essex said, and said it with so cool an
assurance that the glove was meekly handed over
to him. A moment later Sir Edmund Bruce
dropped into Gallia's vacant chair, and Forrester
had to name the men to each other, and observe
the neatness with which Essex had got the glove
out of sight before Sir Edmund's eye could have
fallen on it.

" Let me put it on for you," Essex said ten
minutes later, when he came on Gallia alone in
the green gloom of Mrs. Leighton's little palm-
house. He took her hand in his, turned it over,
then spread out the fingers one by one, and
folded them together again. Gallia made no
sign. She was as though under chloroform,
breathing naturally, slightly, her muscles flaccid
and limp, her power over herself simply nil.
"Was this the next style of treatment she had
asked for ?

Essex raised the hand — a white, slim, charming
hand it was — a little higher up ; he was sitting
opposite her on the immense tub of a woolly-
stemmed palm. He was going to kiss her hand,
she knew ; and she knew she was glad that he
was going to kiss it: she had one fear which

GALLIA. 73

came and went with the throb of her even pulse
— that he would put it down without kissing it.

" I wish I were as beautiful as your sister,"
Gallia was impelled to say, and she said it with
some carelessness and a smile.

" I am glad you are not — or I should worship
you," said Essex, speaking low.

" And if you did ?" she asked, looking at him
still lightly, and with a curl of amusement on
her lips which masked perfectly her curious
feelings.

"If I did — I should want you," he said
slowly.

His head was bent and she could not see his
face, but she did not care to, she was occupied
with her own feelings. Still, it was a strange
phenomenon, this Essex with a note of ordinary
passion in his voice, a note that Gallia was hear-
ing for the first time in her life. All she knew
in the strange confusion of the moment was, that
this was not herself, not the old self she had eaten
and slept and risen and walked with for so many
years. It was a self she had never known or sus-
pected the existence of; she was sure she would
be ashamed of it afterwards — at the time it was
too strong for her, and had to have its way and
sway. Next, he looked at her, seeming to ap-
praise her, and not unkindly. Few women but
have to live through this discomfort, which
arises through their having awaked at the wrong

74 GALLIA.

moment for the wrong man. "I should want
you," he had said.

" But my life has no need of you, Gallia, and
I don't — I don't." The head-shake and the sad
smile with which he said the last words tore
something down in Gallia's soul. The veil of
the temple was rent in twain. It was not that
the worst had come, it was that everything had
come. There could be nothing any more.

Gallia was in the drawing-room rallying Mau-
rice about his fund of wit and humour before
that big minute had closed and gone to make up
its little hour.

"Never happy any more," — where had she
heard the line ? It was some refrain, apparently,
that had stuck in her mind, and she marvelled to
hear it beaten out so clearly in the hoof-strokes
of her father's horses as they drove home.

Essex sat on the edge of a palm-tub and
laughed to himself, and wiped his eyes with a
long thin pearl-coloured glove.

CHAPTER VIII.

Five weeks had passed since the dinner at
Mrs. Leighton's at which Gallia had met Dark
Essex, and she had not yet succeeded in com-
forting herself. Outwardly she had been the
same ; her way of life was in no wise altered,
and at luncheon and dinner, when she joined her
father and mother, her dark face sparkled and
her sharp young tongue clacked with all their
wonted brightness. It was when she got upstairs
to her own rooms that the brunt of that meeting
made itself felt. She had come to observe nar-
rowly the manner of the recurrence of that recol-
lection,— not that this made it any easier to bear,
only she was trained to the verbatim reporting
of her own feelings, and would not have known
how to cease from it. Suppose she was wander-
ing towards her desk, or kneeling on the rug
beside her dog, or dislodging the Grand Vizier,
as she called her big Persian cat, from his nest
among the divan cushions, a blankness would
fall upon her mind.

"I remember; there was something that has
made me unhappy : what was it ?"

Thus her mind would go to work; then sud-
denly the sharpness of remembrance would lay

75

76 GALLIA.

hold of her nerves, and a little inarticulate cry
would escape her; her hands would go up to
hide her face, and a shiver, not in her limhs, but
in her body, would shake and sicken her. Then
with a smile she would say, " I told him that I
loved him, Grand Vizier, — no, I asked him to
love me, — and he pushed me aside like a Picca-
dilly cab-tout. 0 God !"

Done with smiling, the shame and the bitter-
ness choked her, and she would bury her face in
one of her dozen cushions.

" I used to think no feeling was eternal, or even
should be eternal," she said one day, after some
such turn of suffering. " Life blots out life no
less than death does, I used to say to some of
the girls. But I was wrong. Some bits of life
have a longevity in proportion to their bitter-
ness. Some things one doesn't forget or live
out; some feelings have a strength" —

To Gallia, talking aloud was as congenial and
familiar as it is to all somewhat separated beings
who are in the habit of thinking. She was not,
as are many people, self-conscious when left
alone with herself, she was at her ease, at home,
in the society of someone she at least knew and
had tried always to understand.

" I wonder, does the same division obtain in
the kingdom of sentiment as obtains in the
world ? Are there feelings with the life of little
animals and birds, and if one strikes them with

GALLIA. 77

the will, firmly, do they bleed to death in five
minutes ; and are there others with the life of
the wild beasts in them, that grow stronger and
wilder and savager the moment they are wounded,
and fight us worse and die hard. Surely, the
good, kind, sweet feelings are the little animals ;
how quick charity and good temper and gen-
erosity will bleed to death and be forgotten!
Passions are the brutes, the lions, tigers, and
leopards of that kingdom : they leap up and hit
harder and maul worse after the first bullet
behind the shoulder. But the reptile feelings —
what are they? Slowrlived, poisonous things,
that crawl and crawl and drag their wounds
with them in no discomfort. Shame is a snake,
and you may cut its head off and it will live
still. Jealousy, humiliation — the vipers of the
feeling world. But shame — shame is a snake,
and it is knotted all round me."

Tears did not come readily to Gallia, but the
dry, gasping sort of cries that shuddered through
her closed lips every now and then had each the
bitterness of many tears.

It was a big, third-floor, three- windowed room
looking far into the Green Park that was Gallia's
study in the Grosvenor Place house; she had
furnished it herself with a keen eye to well-
considered shapely spaces of fine flooring. It
was not a matter of parquet and prayer-carpets ;
a wide and wonderful velvet pile in dove-grey

78 GALLIA.

and with ouquets of pink and purple flowers in
faded tints ran clear to the skirting-board. Upon
a dais, so strange a lounge as could never be
called a divan had been arranged ; a canopy in
dull purple and duller gold hung over it, and
from a bronze chain a lamp depended, with four
purple eyes in its old metal-work, eyes that
glowed in the early winter dusk — for Gallia had
not switched on her lights yet.

Partly because the room was so wide, partly
because the scheme of decoration had been so
broadly carried out, Gallia made a very small
heap of human suffering kneeling there beside
the Grand Vizier, with whose plush existence
nothing could ever interfere. Her dark violet
cloth gown — so much of herself as not to seem
a dress at all — fell sparsely round her, and one
meagre purple beam of the little lamp made a
violet pool on the cream-coloured nape of her
neck.

But Gallia roused herself, and kneeling and
sitting on her heels, looked up towards the light
with all the appearance of a young girl before a
shrine.

" "Why I, with all my interests, should care for
any man at all, and that man in particular — I
wish I knew if I did really care for him, and I
wish I knew what leads him to act, intermit-
tently, as if he cared about me. If I were
ever to see him again, I would behave more

GALLIA. 79

straightforwardly. I deserved what I got for
that vulgar reticence I showed. There is no
other word for it. Vulgar ; utterly, vilely, cus-
tomarily, crustedly vulgar. Why couldn't I look
up hravely at him ? why couldn't I say plainly
and simply, 'Dark Essex, I love you, do you
not love me too ?' But no ! I am too half-and-
half — neither a good woman of the old kind nor
a good woman of the new. Surely he would
have treated me with respect ? No woman — no
decent woman — scoffs or jeers at a man who tells
her he loves her. If he had not loved me, he
could have said so. I would have borne the dis-
appointment with as much pride as I could find,
and I should have been able to respect myself; there
would have been no shame. But what have I
done ? Let him play with me ; take my hand
and toy with it, and/eeZ it, like a hired creature,
without even the satisfaction of doing my duty,
and fulfilling my part of the bargain, which a
hired creature would have had. Lower than the
women in the street I've been ; lower than the
poor, poor women in the street. Oh !"

She had come back to the same bitter shudder
and the same sickening sense of degradation.
Her head was buried between her knees now,
her white hands squeezed whiter in their con-
vulsive pressure. Gallia was at the age for what
must be described as "tall" sentiment. This
sort of thing was just as real to her as would

80 GALLIA.

have been any of the real sorrows of life. And
the tiresome part of sorrows is that they do not
hurt in proportion to their validity and excusa-
bility. If we are to he sympathetic, we can re-
member always that silly suffering hurts just as
much as sensible suffering. A love-trouble, even
when you love the wrong person without having
any business to, is just as bitter as having a
relative carried off by a railway accident.

The soft mumble of the lift-ropes sounded
from without, there was a footstep or two in the
passage, the door opened, and the footman said,
" Mr. Essex," in the strange hard voice he used
upon the big staircase at parties.

The odious rush of blood in Gallia took from
her the power to think clearly. She knew that
since the door was round a corner, he would not
have seen her; she knew that the room was
almost in darkness ; would Hendon turn on the
light or not ? If he didn't, and she kept quiet,
perhaps Essex would not see. This jumble of
thoughts went through her like a rifle bullet;
there was a little click just before the door
closed, and three constellations gleamed out
among the wall draperies.

She raised herself softly inside her silken skirt,
but the rustle caught his ear, and he saw — there
was no means of disguising it — that she had
been kneeling, that she had been giving way to
emotion, that her self-possession was to seek.

GALLIA. 81

She stood and looked at him for a few mo-
ments, saying nothing, holding out no hand,
using the time to collect herself and decide how
to deal with him since he was in her presence.

His smile, his whole air, the way in which he
held his hat and stick, were those of any and
every man of manners who makes a call.

She could read nothing in them.

But she was not like any woman receiving a
visitor ; there was no reason to battle through
the surf of commonplace with Essex before
riding upon the deep waters. So she said
nothing till he had spoken.

He took no notice of the fashion of his recep-
tion ; he produced a little package.

" I wanted to return you this myself — because
I have been so terribly unfortunate as to burn
one page with some cigarette ash," he said, very
easily and well. "Before replacing the volume
with another, which anybody might have done,
I wanted to show it to you and ask you to let me
mend it. You see, I thought, as there are some
marks in it, you might value this copy. Now,
it can be mended by means of this other copy
I bring. Dear Miss Hamesthwaite, what is the
matter with you? you are not suffering from
a stiff neck, I hope ?"

In spite of herself Gallia laughed.

" I believe that is it," she said drily.

" Well, I daresay you are not in the mood for
/

82 GALLIA.

visitors, but give me your attention for three
minutes, and then I will go."

This alarmed her very much indeed : unpre-
pared for his coming, she was less prepared to
have him go. But she said no word till they
had opened the little book and discussed its
wound. She would have nothing done to it;
she knew the word that was missing in the
verse, and it might have been her own cigarette
any day in the week. She forgave it freely.

" Since you are so good, I will go."

" Since I am so good, I think you might stay.
I want to ask you something. Sit down Bome-
where."

He took a chair, put his hat and stick upon the
floor, and leaned towards her with his hands —
very fine sallow hands — dangling between his
knees. It was an attitude of uncompromising
attention. For the moment Gallia was unnerved.
She altered her plan of attack.

" Why are you so different to-day ?" she said,
in a manner very natural and frank.

" That cannot have been what you wanted to
ask me, but I will answer it if you wish. This
is my afternoon manner ; I put it on with this
coat." He glanced down the front of himself,
and dusted a slight speck from its lodgment
between two buttons. As he sat there, he was
an infinitely elegant and correct presentment of
a man of his world. Gallia wondered how he

GALLIA. 83

could conceal so much divergence from the type
inside one frock-coat.

" I am going to ask you to let me refer to our
last meeting," she said gently and very gravely,
" or rather parting."

" You got up and rushed off, if I remember."

Gallia believed he was nervous underneath his
smile.

"I greatly regret my manner all through that
interview — it was not sufficiently frank or
straightforward."

He looked genuinely surprised.

"I don't know if you will agree with my
summary of the interview, so I will put a ques-
tion to you first. Will you really say what you
think in reply?"

" Mb, I can't make any such promise."

" But you will try to answer truly V

"If lean, I will."

"What did you think were my feelings for
you that evening — particularly during the time
we sat in the palm-house ?"

" I am glad to be able to speak by the book.
You thought me ' simply abominable.' "

"Ah, no, don't joke — that is only another
complication. But if jokes are to count," with
a feminine whisk of her tactics, " did you think
I was really in danger of doing so when you
asked me not to fall in love with you ?"

" Every woman is — are we to say in danger ?—

84 GALLIA.

very well — is in danger of falling in love, as they
have agreed to term it, with every man when
the people in question are your and my ages,
and have corresponding appearances and gifts."

" Is every man in danger of falling in love
with every woman, then — given the same con-
ditions as you name ?"

" Certainly."

" Well, did you think then — do you think
now — that I have fallen in love with you ?"

" How could I be so vain as to say so, if I did
think it?"

" I perceive that I have begun ill — you are not
replying well. We must do it some other way.
I am going to grant that my manner in the palm-
house could readily have given you the impres-
sion that I was in love with you."

" If it did, if you were, if I was, if neither of
us is — what matter, so long as we say nothing
about it to each other ?"

" I can't agree with you there."

" Of course not, because you are a woman,
•and must continually be pulling up a plant to
see how it is growing. Now, for Heaven's sake,
don't snatch at that wretched metaphor and turn
it some other way on !"

" I am going to do nothing of the kind."

She got up from her chair some yard or two

away, came up to him and put her hands on his

•shoulders; as he didn't look up, she raised his

GALLIA. 85

chin with one stiff finger. Her eyes had a dif-
ferent kind of light, her lips were parted, and
her voice, when it came, was rich, tender, beauti-
ful as he had never heard it.

" Listen ! I owe you a straight speech, and even
if you don't want to hear it, bear with me, for
it hurts so to know one has not been true to
oneself — that one hasn't had courage. Oh, there
isn't anything women want except courage — they
have to use so much, much more than men. If
I spend all mine in the next minute, it will be
good ; I shall have been true. The other night,
I don't know what took hold of me ; I have felt
once or twice that you were different from any
other man I've seen, and made me feel different.
I think, in a crowd, if you had been somewhere
behind me, I'd have known you were there.
The other night, though you said one rude thing
after another, and didn't use even the commonest
civility to me, my whole soul wrapped itself up
in one thought; it seemed to sit with folded
arms inside me, waiting for you, wanting you to
kiss my hand. I didn't know it then, but I
believe now that that means that I love you.
Hush ! — wait. It is all right— I know you said
it — your life has no need of me, and I am not
beautiful enough for you to worship — that on
one side. You have no need of me. I don't
think you told me as kindly as you might.
One never knows, but I think — well, yes, I think

8

86 GALLIA.

if it had been you showing me that you loved
me, and if I had felt like you — I think I would
have spoken differently ! But, however, it came !
I am young and I can put up with it. I have
loved you — it is right that you should know it ;
I love you still, and may do so for a long time ;
but I want you to forgive me for the other
evening. It was immodest, flagrant, shameless,
the way I sat there and said nothing, and let
you use me as you did. That was disgraceful,
and though I have tried, I can't forget the
shame of it. But it was so new to me then, I
was taken by surprise. I had not an idea that
I loved you, or I would have been ready to
speak. I would have said, ' No, none of these
simulacra with me ; I really love you, and they
insult me.' But I will forget those to you, for
perhaps you did not guess I loved you. Will
you try to forgive me my want of honesty, since
I have tried to make up for it now 1"

CHAPTER IX.

She stood back from him, her arms at her
sides, waiting as though for a sentence, for his
reply. He got up and went over to lean upon
the mantelshelf. "With an elbow in one of its
dusky oak crevices and his face finely thrown up
by the background of carving, he was still at his
full height, and he felt free, his own man.

For a moment, as she watched him keenly,
Gallia thought he was going to be natural, to be
what she knew he might be if ever he would
give his inner self free play ; but next instant a
smile rose, and her head rolled from side to side
in the impatience she immediately felt of the
manner he was assuming.

" It has been a question in good society," he
began very slowly, " how far it is justifiable for
one person to place another person in an impos-
sible position ; you will, since you are a member
of that society, know doubtless better than I do
how this question has been decided. But out
of the depths of a somewhat sickly experience
of the world, I am able to tell you one thing —
that, had you said these things to nine out of ten
other men, they would have seized and kissed
you, and said God knows what, that you wouldn't

87

88 GALLIA.

have been prepared to hear. And they would
have been in no sense to blame. You are going
to say that they would not have been gentle-
men."

"I wasn't; I was going to say they could
hardly be so dull of apprehension as to so mis-
take me," cried Gallia hotly.

" It would not have been a matter of appre-
hension, dull or the reverse. It would have
been a matter of convention. Men are always
expected, in certain positions, to show passion."
He smiled very drily. " They are expected — by
women at least — to be what women call men.
Nine out of ten women would have meant that
speech to end in a smother of embraces. One
moment. I am not in the least certain that you
are the tenth woman, I am only sure that I am
the tenth man. You will admit that I have not
kissed you ?"

" "Why should I mind if you had, when I love
you ?" Gallia asked simply. " You know I didn't
mean things to end in one way or another. I
said what I thought I ought to say to save my
own self-respect, and you were and are free to
act exactly as you think right or feel inclined.
Though I would, of course, prefer you to under-
stand rather than misunderstand me."

A footman came in at this moment.

" Her ladyship wished me to say Mr. Gurdon
was in the drawing-room, and if you were dis-

GALLIA. 89

engaged, she would like you to come down,
miss."

" Say to her ladyship, Hendon, that I am not
able to come down this afternoon."

He went out, and Gallia turned to Essex
again.

" Why can you not treat me with the same
decency a woman is expected to show a man
when he tells her he loves her? What is the
difference ?"

" I daresay from your point of view there is
no difference, and I hope you will think that I
have behaved myself as becomingly as any
woman could have done."

" Well, you have not acted like the nine men
you mention, from one of two reasons. Perhaps
because you had the sense to see that I expected
nothing of the kind, perhaps because you did
not happen to have the feelings you say they
would have had."

"I am not in the least moved to explain
which," said Essex calmly. " The subject of
what you and a number of other people call
love may be one I have never studied, or it
may be that 1 have read further into it than
you have done. Perhaps I call love by some
other names, perhaps I don't even see it to be a
fine and desirable feeling. We needn't go into
that."

" No, we needn't ; there is no question of it.

8*

90 GALLIA.

I had merely to explain conduct I was ashamed
of, to explain it for my own sake ; I have done.
I am glad and proud again ; I have not, if you
have understood me, anything more to feel
ashamed of." She came up to him and took
his hand. " Thank you. You at any rate
listened to me — I am grateful for it."

If ever a pair of sincere eyes looked up at a
man, they were Gallia's. Essex, even through
his priggishness and affectation, was conscious
of being at a disadvantage.

"By the way," with a complete change of
tone, " you had a glove of mine — will you please
give it me ?"

" Are you afraid I may make a trophy of it?"

She shook her head and smiled a little wistfully.

" No, you won't make me believe you really
credit me with so unworthy a thought."

" I haven't it with me now ; I will post it to
you."

« Thanks."

" And — don't you think the world is still a
little too raw for your very advanced treatment
of it?"

He went to get his hat and stick.

"No," said Gallia firmly, and sitting down
among her cushions; "the world is never too
raw for a woman to do what she thinks right.
She would help to keep it raw by playing down
to its rawness. There can be no excuse for not

ALLIA. 91

acting in accordance with the light one has.
One may be misunderstood, one may be dis-
liked, but we have to save our own souls for
ourselves."

" And the dramatic faculty inherent in all
women makes the saving process so much the
more picturesque."

A disheartened note of sad laughter came from
her.

" Good-bye," was all she said.

" If one could believe you sincere, you would
be worth loving, by some better man than I.
Good-bye, O New Woman, who is yet the old !"

" Good-bye, epitome of unbelief." Gallia was
smiling too. " If only" you have not put out my
soul's little light !" she added, half to herself, in
a frightened whisper.

This time Essex laughed musically as he went
to the door.

" Let me know if I have," were the last words
she heard him say ; then the door shut, the lift-
ropes rumbled again, and two minutes later she
watched him cross the road towards the park
gates.

She drew a nervous breath or two, and passed
her handkerchief below the curls on her fore-
head.

" That is the end of that," she said. " If I had
foreseen his coming at all, I should have foreseen
his going too. It is no worse and no better

92 GALLIA.

than I might have imagined it." She walked up
and down the big room several times, not so
much thinking as struggling to get hold of her
feelings, and know what she thought.

" Life is no different now from what it was,"
she told herself, " and yet I feel as though I had
to gather up the threads and see into what kind
of knot I can tie them, and how I can get them
to hold. Nothing has really happened, only
now I know that something is not going to
happen — for instance, love is not going to hap-
pen. What did he mean about the name he
might call it by? Of course he must see it
very differently from me. He hinted that he
thought it neither fine nor desirable. That was
very honest of him. I was too hard ; I didn't
think — one never does think till afterwards —
that of course he cannot respect love. "What
man can be honest with himself and about him-
self? I wish I had told him that I saw that,
that I knew that ! And I wish — oh, how I wish
I had asked him to kiss me once ! Perhaps he
would have said no ; but if he would have con-
sented to be simple, surely he would not have
minded kissing me just once ! A woman always
grants as much as that, and shines in doing it.
It is looked on as a sacrifice on her part, and no
one thinks the worse of her. Could anyone,
even himself, have thought the worse of him?
Ah, how I wish — I wish"— a rush of emotion

GALLIA. 93

almost choked her, but she flung her head up
and ran to the window to look at the lights
twinkling across the Park ; with her hands cling-
ing to the casement bar, she leaned there a
moment. " For now I shall never be kissed,
and it cannot be good never to have been kissed
at all ! "Well, there will be one of the flowers
of life I shall never have picked — a love-kiss.
Surely, surely no woman can be so mean and
poor a creature as not to be worth and worthy
of one man's kiss ?"

Her earnestness was pitiful. Essex had fatu-
ously mistaken Gallia : she had absolutely no
dramatic faculty, was never conscious of her
attitude or her expression, or the strength of the
feeling from an outside point of view. She was
only bitterly and clearly honest in herself and to
others; her ideal was high, and her ideal was
absolute reality. She had never buried any truth
from herself, and could not easily understand the
desire to do so which is so common. In spite of
a very wideawake mind, she had no idea to what
•extent compromise enters into the most honour-
able man's idea of honour. As a woman, she
took honour and honesty very seriously, well
knowing them to be among the latest branches
of study opened to her sex, and deeply sensible
of their importance ; but of the necessity for
compromise even in such holy of holies she knew
nothing.

94 GALLIA.

Entirely without conceit and self-consciousness,
her whole life was a desire to know, and then to
be true to what she knew. Crude and perhaps
ludicrous as she might now and then appear, her
single-mindedness was her most marked char-
acteristic. Had she been different, had she had
the skill of any of the nine women Essex had
cited, she would have been nine times better
fitted to win his love — only she would never
have striven to do it.

She suffered at this time because her views
were nobler, she herself a little better than com-
mon ; such human creatures as differ thus from
their fellows are rarely made welcome in the
world of men and women in which she lived.

It was so late now that she hurried to her
rooms. There were no tears to dry, no eyes that
needed bathing, no sign for a maid's keen eyes
to notice that her mistress had lived through
any scene. When she came running from her
bath, she brought a calm, quiet face with her,
and immersed herself quite naturally in the even-
ing papers while her hair was being dressed.
Her mother was in the drawing-room, with a
magazine and a paper-cutter, as usual, when she
went in ; they were to dine alone, and to pick
Lord Hamesthwaite up at eleven at the House
on their way to a reception.

" So sorry, dear, that you could not come
down when Mark Ghirdon was here ; he was so

GALLIA. 95

interesting about Africa," Lady Hamesthwaite
said pleasantly, with her customary proud smile
at her daughter's beautiful face.

" Mr. Essex came in, and I really think he
must have stayed two hours with me," Gallia
replied, naturally.

" Do you like Mr. Essex very much ?"

Gallia paused to weigh her words.

" No, mother ; I don't think I like him par-
ticularly at all."

" Who is Essex, by the way ?" Lord Hames-
thwaite had come in and overheard these re-
marks.

"He is an Oxford man; a fellow and a tutor.
He writes a good deal for the literary weeklies,
I think," Gallia answered ; " and he is often in
London, for his mother is a great invalid. They
have a house, — in Hammersmith Terrace, I be-
lieve he said, — and they are very poor."

" His sister is a very beautiful woman," said
Gallia's father judicially.

" Yes; I would like to know her so much."

" You are sure to meet her at Aunt Celia's ;
she is a great pet there."

They rose to pass in to dinner.

"A handsome family, then," Lord Hames-
thwaite said; "that young man had a very
unusual type of good looks, but I am afraid he
is a prig."

Gallia was not at a point whence she could

96 GALLIA.

perceive the rugged truth of this dictum. Be-
sides, she would have persisted in loving him
even had she been convinced of his prighood.
He was the first man she had loved, and the first
man is never a woman's free choice. Like the
first fish of the amateur trouter, he is an acci-
dent; neither science, skill, nor selection has a
hand in landing him. Sometimes he is a hand-
some and creditable accident. I have known
the first man in more than one case to be a
meritorious person — oftenest, though, he is a
very mean, small-finned little accident.

The conversation drifted off to Mark Gurdon
again and his African experiences.

" I believe he is to be at Axminster's dinner
at the Reform to-morrow ; I must keep my eye
on him if Celia wants him helped into some-
thing."

Nothing seemed more natural to Lord Hames-
thwaite than that a young man should want to
be helped into something ; whereas to hear that
a man wrote for literary weeklies was to hear
something that made it very difficult to realise
his personality.

"Poor old Mr. Quittenden has had another
stroke," Gallia remarked presently, feeling
within herself a strong need of the relief of the
commonplace. And someone else's tragedy is
just as often our commonplace as our tragedy is
• theirs.

GALLIA. 97

"Where did you see that?" Lord Hames-
thwaite asked quickly.

" All the papers have the telegram."

"This child may be trusted," Lady Hames-
thwaite began laughingly, " to see and know of
what is happening" — She was interrupted by
a fit of coughing; her husband looked quickly
up at her, but said nothing.

" Ah, that was the second stroke, wasn't it ?
It can only be a matter of weeks — or, at most,
months — for the member for Hollo whampton."

" Poor old thing ! I liked him so much that
one day he lunched here," Gallia said. " It is
really very sad."

" 'm, yes !" replied her father, who keenly re-
membered Mr. Quittenden's action regarding a
certain Bill, and wasn't so sure that it would be
so very sad for his party.

" He was always such an admirer of yours,
Gerald!"

Lord Hamesthwaite looked doubtfully at his
wife.

" I remember so well his saying to me, ' There
isn't another man in England who so completely
fills the idea of a" — Again Lady Hamesthwaite
was interrupted by the same strange, choking
cough.

" Now, Julia," Lord Hamesthwaite burst out,
bringing his fingers sharply on the table, " this
settles it. London is not for you. Don't say
k g 9

98 GALLIA.

a word — I will have my own way about it.
Gallia, your mother must go abroad at once.
I've been very patient. I've watched this getting
worse daily, and I've seen the futility of treat-
ment. ~No doubt I've been a fool to hold my
tongue so long about it. But go she must, and
that immediately."

"But my dinners, my receptions — the invi-
tations are all out !" poor Lady Hamesthwaite
interjected pathetically. " And Gallia, whom I
thought I was to have the happiness of taking
about with me this year" —

" Gallia will go with you, as I cannot leave
town. She has finished with Oxford. Tou can
take her, or she can take you, about the Riviera,
if you like."

Gallia had one moment of communing .with
herself, then she said cheerfully, "I'll tell you
where we'll go, mother, we will go to Algiers.
It will do you heaps of good."

And so they spent most of the evening dis-
cussing and forming plans.

The last post brought Gallia a small regis-
tered package. Within it was one long glove
and one of Mr. Essex's cards.

She turned them over several times, amused
at the over-care, in which she detected more
than a spice of scorn, which had registered the
tiny parcel, hurt somehow by the formality of
the visiting-card. She turned over the doubled

GALLIA. 99

sheet of notepaper and looked inside the en-
velope. There was no word, not a pen-scratch.
Just the address in Essex's little cramped Greek
handwriting.

" Yes, mother, let it be Algiers. And — let us
go to-morrow. We can spend a week in Cannes
to get anything you may need."

" My dear, I need nothing but what can be
telegraphed for to Paris ; but to-morrow" —

" Do let it be to-morrow, if you can, dear. I
am so sick of — I hate — hate — hate this place
so !" She flung herself back in her chair so
violently, and threw her arms above her head
with so much vehemence, that the little matters
on her knees, the glove and its belongings, fell
upon the floor. Lady Hamesthwaite noticed
them with her kind, tactful eyes, and came over
to Gallia and kissed her.

" To-morrow or next day, dear, at latest.
Now, away to bed ; we shall be so busy all day
seeing people, and explaining things, and writing
notes."

CHAPTER X.

Mrs. Leighton happened to be giving a little
luncheon-party, when Lady Hamesthwaite ran
in on the following morning to announce the
Algiers programme, and find condolence for the
necessity of giving up all her social ploys for the
winter. Margaret Essex, whom Mrs. Leighton
frankly delighted in because she was so beauti-
ful, and Mark Gurdon were of the party, and
they sat next each other.

Every man has, at the bottom of his heart,
an admiration, more or less strong according to
his temperament, for the delicately beautiful,
beneficent-faced, and gracious married woman —
the woman of the kind eyes and tender mouth.
It is less the beauty of this sort of woman than
her beneficent air that wins him. She is the
woman who draws most souls to follow after
her, she has the face which could start a crusade.
She may have moments that are humanly prank-
some, but she is guilelessness itself. She is more
wonderful at thirty than at twenty, for the per-
sistent beauty of her character, as it grows
stronger and stronger, can draw only beautiful
lines in her face, "We may thank our stars and
100

GALLIA. 101

gods that hers is an inextinguishable race, that
there will always be some of these women to
be found, that where they walk, things hope-
lessly wicked will bud out into goodness, and
good things be better. We can only have one
quarrel against them; that their immemorial
fine forgiveness may perpetuate things indiffer-
ently good and bad.

Margaret Essex was young yet, but the mark
belonging to this race of souls was set on her
forehead already. She was not very clever, she
had not much brain, and her training had been
desultory; but none of those things matter in
such a woman. I think she may be exempted
from tediously practical formulae, and the set
duties of a dull world ; in the advancement of
women she must always be franked. On the
whole, it is admitted by right that woman's
sense of law, order, and judgment should be
taught as they are being taught now ; but this
must not apply to the soul-woman I am speak-
ing of. She has a track of her own to follow,
lonely and lovely. She is amenable to laws as
mysterious to us as those that tell the tides when
to turn.

Enough of her. This was the race to which
Margaret Essex belonged, and Grurdon had
summed her up coldly and foolishly on that day
when she passed him by in Paris. He knew
now that he had been wrong. He had never
9*

102 GALLIA.

talked to any woman in his life who gave him
the same feelings as this one. Man is ap-
proached through his simple senses first; a
goddess may sit at his elbow, and the turn of
her wrist as she handles a fork will be the first
of her charms to arouse his regards. Mark
found himself watching Margaret's fingers as
she crumbled her bread, and wondering if it
were merely that he had never observed women's
fingers before, or if hers were really so infinitely
more delicate in colouring and contour than
those of any other woman ? They were flower-
fingers. Then her voice, her habit of speaking
with her eyes cast down in thought, and at the
end of her sentence, or if she put a question,
raising them with so clear and direct a glance;
this unconscious charm he caught himself wait-
ing for, with an eagerness that was utterly
foreign to his whole nature as he knew it. That
she had not recognised him as the man who had
been walking that day in the Jardin du Luxem-
bourg with Leighton was quite certain ; so far
she had only heard of him as being newly
returned from Africa, and he had carefully re-
frained from mentioning Paris. Strange, but he
would have been unanxious for her to identify
him as Leighton's friend at this early moment
of their acquaintance. She disapproved of
Leighton. She must have learned — she couldn't
have failed to learn — of Leighton's relations with

GALLIA. 103

Arsenie, and Gurdon didn't find it anything but
natural that her favour was removed from a
man who openly kept a mistress. Gurdon was
a man of no imagination whatever; for him,
what was, was. It was habitual for women to
disapprove of a man who kept a mistress and
took small pains to conceal this fact ; just as it
was habitual for them to receive intimately, and
finally marry, men who had connections, decently
regulated and properly concealed, of a more
casual nature. Gurdon hadn't a shadow of
doubt in his mind that Margaret's moral views
were of this complicated but no less universal
pattern; he felt sure she would recognise the
same difference between the two kinds of men
that he did ; and he sympathised with her in the
shock she must have experienced in discovering
Leighton's lapse from this high standard, and
felt that she was entirely justified in dropping
his acquaintance. There was one little faint
distinction, which he would have admitted, but
which did not happen to occur to him. He
would have excused Leighton everything but
the publicity of his behaviour ; and Margaret
would not. But this was, after all, a very, very
faint distinction, although in the present ease, it
had been the direct cause of Leighton's losing
her friendship.

Margaret had been what may be described as
" carefully brought up ;" she had lost her father

104 GALLIA.

early, but her mother, who was a clever and a
charming woman, had herself accompanied her
to Germany, and then to France, for educational
purposes ; and it was only during the last year,
when Mrs. Essex had become too much of an
invalid to leave her home, that she had consented
unwillingly to her daughter's studying art in
Paris. So far as it could be, everything that
could be done was done, and every precaution
taken; with the result that Margaret's sojourn
gained greatly in dulness and propriety, while it
certainly lost in gaiety and charm. The five
hundred a year which was Mrs. Essex's income
amply sufficed to keep going the little house in
Hammersmith Terrace, and Essex, though he was
not particularly generous, provided his sister's
dress allowance from his own not over well-filled
coffers.

They were the widow's only children, and
though the son had her own dark kind of beauty
(so much so, that his real name, Hubert,' had
fallen into disuse, and most people spoke of him
as Dark, a sobriquet he had acquired at Win-
chester), it was on Margaret's face, the fair refine-
ment of her dead husband's, that Mrs. Essex
loved best to look.

" Do you know, I haven't seen your brother
for years, and once I was very much indebted
to him down at Oxford," Gurdon said, gliding
carefully away from the subject of art, which

GALLIA. 105

was too nearly allied to Paris to be safe for dis-
cussion.

" "What did he do for you 1" Margaret asked.

" Oh, he read with me ; gave me a short cut
when I had been neglecting my reading badly,
and was becoming scared at the thought of the
exams."

" He can't be much older than you ?"

" No ; but he had had the benefit of a con-
sistent classical education, and was years ahead
of me in most things," Gurdon answered; and
was amused to find a man of his experience
speaking of a consistent classical education as a
benefit.

" He is fearfully clever," Margaret said, betray-
ing a simple worship, which Gurdon thought as
delightful as it is now-a-days proportionately
rare. Though he did not know many women,
Gurdon was dimly aware that they were no
longer in the habit of thinking men " fearfully
clever"; he knew that some totally different
spirit was abroad. How refreshing to come
across a beautiful woman, a woman of spirit too,
like Margaret Essex, who was still able to look
up in worship of the man she thought fearfully
clever !

" Would he be likely to be at home if I were
to call some day a little after five ?" Gurdon said,
rather disingenuously, and meaning "Would
you be at home V

106 GALLIA.

" He goes down to Oxford to-morrow. What
a pity!" The eyes rested on him again, with
their frank, glistening look. "He is at home
to-day, going over his books."

"If it would be convenient, I might drive
down to-day. It is Hammersmith, is it not?"
Gurdon did not ask himself why he was so
anxious to get a footing in that Hammersmith
house — time enough for reflection afterwards;
but he knew very well what he wanted, and he
saw proudly that he had secured it.

Luncheon was over at last, and guests left
early, as everybody knew that Lady Hames-
thwaite had come for a last interview with her
sister; and a few people who had heard her
cough, and who felt that easy lack of responsi-
bility in disposing of their friends which is so
common, thought that it might indeed prove to
be her last interview.

"You will let me see you to the train?"
Gurdon was saying to Margaret in the hall, as
she stood fastening her little sable close round
her neck.

" Thank you, but I am going to walk up
Gloucester Road and take an omnibus ; the train
is nearer and quicker, of course, but we don't
often have so bright an afternoon as this."

" Then perhaps I may see you to the omnibus ?"
Mark said, with a smile.

" If it is your way."

GALLIA. 107

" Did you not tell me I could find your brother
this afternoon ?"

" Oh, you are coming out too ?" She did not
seem to have grasped this, and she turned to him
with a little sparkle of surprise.

" However innocent a woman may be, it is
safer not to presume too much upon that inno-
cence," thought the cautious Mark very wisely.
A sun of shrewdness and womanly intuition is
apt to break through those poetic blue mists of
unsuspicion.

"It would be a pleasure to me to see him
again, and this seems to be my only chance," he
replied coolly.

A few moments later they had scaled the
stairway of a red " road-car," and settled them-
selves easily and simply in the close quarters of
a garden-seat.

" For real exhilaration, give me the top of an
omnibus on a fine afternoon in London," Mar-
garet exclaimed, with evident enjoyment, as
they rolled quickly over the good wood pave-
ment. " The men drive so splendidly, and it
seems to me an omnibus always gets through
things before every other conveyance. I love to
feel the on and off of the break, and to watch
the way the pole seems to feels its way through
the traffic. The lightness and balance of these
poles must be wonderful, you know — a touch
sways them. Then the horses are so nice and

108 GALLIA.

fat and strong, and you never see a lame horse
in an omnibus, whereas nearly all the horses in
cabs have something the matter with them."

" I confess these things never struck me before,
but you are perfectly rigbt," Mark said, feeling a
genuine interest for the moment in noticing the
points she referred to.

" Oh, without its omnibuses London would
lose half its charm for me."

"Do you know, your power of observation
must be very keen indeed ? Of course, that is
what makes you an artist."

" Oh no ! Tou are quite wrong — really you
are ! The observation that detects shades of
lameness in cab-horses is not a bit the sort an
artist ought to have. And that happens to be
one of my great difficulties. I am far too care-
ful of detail. ' Cherchez le mouvement,' one of the
professors says to me twice a week. ' Mais,
mademoiselle, ilfaut cligner les yeux.' "

" "Well, but surely"—

" Yes ; but he doesn't mean the peculiarities of
movement in a cab-horse," said Margaret, laugh-
ing; " it is the effect I have to search for, and the
central principle movement. I can't explain it at
all, — I never could explain anything, — but you
know that an artist has to look at effects through
half-closed eyes ; if you are to be broad, if you
are to get your planes of colour right and your
values, you mustn't go darting weasel-gimlet

GALLIA. 109

glances here and there for little minor de-
tails."

" You have cleared up the whole matter for
me in a phrase. ' Weasel-gimlet glances' is ex-
cellent. I never thought of this before, but I see
there are many distinctions even among good
powers of observation. My own are fairly good,
and they are neither like yours nor those you
want to acquire. My eyes seem to have little
independence. I can walk a mile and see noth-
ing, but if I bring my head into play, my eyes
will register with a photographic accuracy, and I
have complete pictures of places, people, and
things fixed firmly on the retina of my brain —
which I would swear by in a court of law after-
wards, if need were."

Margaret looked at him critically, listened
carefully, and then said, with a very ingenuous
touch of admiration, " That is a splendid power
to have at command. I expect you have trained
it greatly."

" I have tried to strengthen it, I think. But,"
smilingly, " I have never tried to talk of it be-
fore, and you must look kindly on my egotism
for once."

She had no need to reply except with a smile,
for they were at Hammersmith, and obliged to
clamber carefully down. The way Margaret
swung the tails of her skirt round her, and posi-
tively ran down the stair, while every other
10

110 GALLIA.

woman blundered into more or less of an expo-
sure of boot-top, thick, shapeless leg, and repel-
lent underskirt, was another point which Gurdon
registered politely in Margaret's favour.

" "We have a little walk now," she said, and
they set off down the bustling, horrible King
Street, having continually to avoid the foot-path
on account of the crowds at the doors of multi-
farious gin-shops.

It was not a moment for conversation, and
Gurdon was busy wondering how he was to
account to Essex himself for the enthusiasm
which had brought him down. If he remem-
bered, Essex was a silent, severe, satirical person,
who would be quite keen enough to see through
the object of Mark's visit, and who would further
be quite cool enough not to help him to carry
off the situation with eclat. The two men had
never actually been friends, though they had
known each other very well and met very fre-
quently ; and though, as Gurdon had said, Essex
had helped him materially when reading for his
degree, yet they had never passed that inde-
finable barrier between knowing one another
well and being friends.

But small difficulties only whetted Mark's
courage, and he followed Margaret into the
drawing-room with a good air of self-possession.

CHAPTEE XL

As a matter of fact, that call in Hammersmith
turned out exceedingly well. It is only necessary
to go to a place in sufficient trepidation, and a
visit always will turn out well, provided the trepi-
dation does not bereave the caller of his senses.
Gurdon's trepidation did not so bereave him ; he
was only conscious of having padded out a college
intimacy slightly, and this for his own excellent
purposes. Once inside the house, he had a
quarter of an hour in which to get on terms with
Mrs. Essex; this was the kind of social enter-
prise in which success was certain to him. Mrs.
Essex brought out her best conversation, and
imagined that she had been entertaining a young
man of public importance, as well as a young man
whom Margaret must like, or else, why had she
brought him down — upon an omnibus, too, that
very hob-nobby and familiar vehicle ? Her son,
coming into the room and finding them talk-
ing and laughing with such freedom and good
understanding, himself being a remarkably self-
centred person, accepted Gurdon as his sister's
and his mother's friend, remembered him as a

in

112 GALLIA.

very decent fellow when he was " up," and chimed
in agreeably in the mutual harmony of the
moment.

Mark left, feeling that Essex was improved
since college days ; that he was more a man of
the world and more human. " I remember, I
believe, that I liked Essex very well," he said to
himself as he went westwards in a train ; and
certainly Gurdon was not the man to notice the
amazing narrowness of mind which was one of
Essex's worst faults, and which the life open to
a Fellow of an exclusive college does nothing to
minimise.

During the long, wintry spring the two men
met a number of times. When Essex was in
town, he dined at the club with Mark ; and once,
when a big statesman went down to speak at
Oxford, Gurdon was Essex's guest for a couple
of days.

But before they encountered one another again
at the house in Hammersmith, Mark had estab-
lished a habit of going to supper there on Sunday
evenings ; and it was an odd week when he did
not manage to see Margaret somewhere, at least
once, in between times.

The fact was, that he was desperately attracted
towards her, and when in her presence did not
recognise himself for the same man : his nature
seemed changed; he expressed opinions with
unimpeachable sincerity, which were in direct

GALLIA. 113

opposition to the opinions he would have ex-
pressed to the men he was in the habit of dining
and talking with at the club. He couldn't fail
to notice the extraordinary effect the girl had on
him. Sometimes he knew he was in love with
her ; he knew that he was going to ask her to
marry him if he had any sort of chance to do so ;
he knew that he would be ruthlessly cutting up
his schemes for his own life and future, and he
knew he would be acting like a fool. At least,
he knew these things when he got back to his
own milieu; he did not know them at Hammer-
smith, and he did not know them in the train ; —
the train formed a kind of hot, yeasty interlude,
when he sat still and read his papers with diffi-
culty, feeling all the time a restlessness and a
desire to gaze into space with a smile upon his
face which must have betrayed his errand to the
stockbroker opposite.

At his rooms, in the big leather arm-chair
which had been his father's, and which had
faithfully hatched out schemes of transcendent
ambition in all his years of office life, Mark
had terrible hours. He was a traitor to these
schemes at heart. He was a traitor to that
chair. One part of his brain looked on in a sort
of cold horror, while the other part sketched
out a future wbich should be more successful
because of the lovely wife who would share it.
"It all depends on whom a man marries," he
10*

114 GALLIA.

would say didactically to himself, well knowing
that it does not. A woman with a great deal of
money would not have retarded him ; any other
woman, no matter how clever and beautiful and
distinguished, certainly would; Mark knew, as
well as any man in Whitehall, that the day is
past when women could play a part in the dip-
lomatic world by reason of personal talent or
beauty. Money, and money only, and a great
deal of money at that, would have helped him.
He was an exceptionally clear-eyed person; he
had studied all the possibilities of advancement
in parliamentary and diplomatic circles ; also he
had looked round him. He could, with the
help of a rich wife, buy a capital position as a
junior politician. But Margaret was poor.
Double and treble-milled was each one of these
thoughts, yet, once at Hammersmith and in the
room, they left him. He was at his ease and
natural again ; natural with the nature Margaret
had called up in him.

Both mother and daughter thought him " de-
lightful," and very clever and full of power and
determination. They magnified his good qual-
ities, as kind women will, and they never ob-
served his bad qualities at all; for which they
are not to be blamed, as these were very negative
in Mark, and might almost be said to be non-
existent at that time. However innocent Mar-
garet may have been of the construction which

GALLIA. 115

might be put upon Mr. Gurdon's visits, and the
meaning he managed to throw into them, — and
it is permissible to imagine Margaret just as
innocent as a " nice" girl ought to be, — it was
not to be supposed that their intention escaped
Mrs. Essex. She saw perfectly well, with ma-
tronly clearness, in fact, that " young Mr. Gur-
don was interested in dear Margaret," had, in
fact, fallen in love with her.

" I suppose we shall have Mr. Gurdon as usual
about seven o'clock," she said, smiling indul-
gently, as she prepared to snatch a few moments'
sleep in her arm-chair after tea.

"I daresay," Margaret answered from the
piano, and without interrupting the "Schlum-
merlied" she was softly playing.

" I like to see a determined lover," Mrs. Essex
went on, still with the same complacence. The
" Schlummerlied" came to an end.

" A determined what f"

" My dear child, of course you are aware that
he may propose any day ?" Mrs. Essex roused
herself a little at Margaret's tone, and a moment
or two later she saw that her sleep that afternoon
must be given up.

" It is a little hard that every intimacy with
a man may have to be terminated just at the
comfortable point — because he thinks it neces-
sary to propose," Margaret said, with a sense of
injury, but an air of great self-possession. " Not

116 GALLIA.

that I have seen any signs of his forgetting him-
self in that way," she added, smiling.

"You may be perfectly assured that he is
going to propose to you. He has singled you
out, ever since he came here, by the most
marked attention. He has sent you books and
songs ; he has brought you flowers ; he has come
early — and — and — not gone away till very late ;
and he neyer takes his eyes off you when he is
in the room."

Mrs. Essex enumerated these points in a help-
less tone, and Margaret nodded, and ticked each
one on her slim fingers. Very true — what can a
man do more ?

" In fact, he has shown all the polite signs of
being in love ?" she said, laughing, and looking
very pretty. Any girl will laugh and look pretty
when she hears of the subjection of a presentable
victim ; she is only haughty and insulted if the
victim is not presentable. Her own feelings for
the man do not come into the question at all at
this stage. " Well," she went on, still smiling,
and still looking pretty, " we will exhibit all the
polite signs in the reverse direction. As I am
not going to accept him, and shouldn't think of
doing so, we must begin at once. For instance :
I will have a headache, and be lying down up-
stairs when he arrives. You will entertain him
till supper-time. I will struggle down to supper,
looking very pale."

GALLIA. 117

" That of course will bring matters to a head
immediately," Mrs. Essex broke in, and herself
unable to prevent a smile at Margaret's nonsense.

" Oh, but I won't be lackadaisical and floppy.
My headache will be of the severe kind, and my
manner will be as severe as the headache. You,
in the meantime, will have prepared the way by
talking about other men I have known and
liked. I think, you know, one gets through
these things quicker and more painlessly if one
conducts them on the ' someone else' tack ; a
man will go away if he is made to understand
that there is another man, but he won't if he
thinks you are fancy-free. "Well, he hardly
could — it would be rude of him. He has to stay
and teach you to care for him. I owe these
ideas entirely to novels, but novelists make a
study of such points. So you will tell him
about other men."

" But what other men ? I don't at this moment
know of any other men. You see, Margaret,
you have not been like most girls of the present
day ; you have not had batches of ' men friends.' "

Margaret nodded. " I've had a mother-friend,"
she said.

" Now, let me think whom you have known ?
But, in any case, it would not be honourable or
true of us to mix up any man's name with yours
— merely to put off Mr. Gurdon. I should not
at all like it."

118 GALLIA.

" Dear mamma, you take it too seriously; you
haven't to say anything at all. After all, I'm
quite as likely to marry any of the men I've
known as Gurdon."

"Mr. Gurdon, dear; don't get into the habit
of speaking of men by their surnames — even to
me. It is very fast, I think."

" "Not exactly fast, now, mamma, surely, though
it may have been once. I expect I have caught
the habit among the girls in Paris. They do it,
but not from fastness, merely from economy of
time."

"It occurs to me that the only young man
you have known is Mr. Robert Leighton." The
word "Paris" had obviously suggested him to
her mother, and Margaret, who was standing
over by a window that looked upon the river,
felt suddenly frightened.

" I wouldn't mention his name, mamma. In
fact, I agree with you that perhaps it wouldn't
be at all a good plan to do as I said."

" The best thing for you to do is to tell him
firmly and quietly that you don't, and never can,
care for him — if that is the case." Mrs. Essex
sighed — from mixed motives, for she had never
been able to contemplate the idea of Margaret's
marriage with equanimity, and it was also true
that she had had pangs of sheer jealousy when
she had seen Gurdon and the girl laughing and
chatting in a certain youthful intimacy that she

GALLIA. 119

of course could never have with her daughter;
at the same time, as a woman, she had to be
sorry for a lover.

" I will not have a headache at all, on second
thoughts," Margaret announced, presently.

" Well, then, I think I will," Mrs. Essex said
lightly, and rising from a chair. " The room is
very warm, Margaret, and I have missed my
sleep." Mrs. Essex had heard the wheels of a
hansom, but she was already on the upper flight
of stairs before the front door bell rang.

And this was the first Sunday evening on
which Mark Gurdon did not stay to supper.

CHAPTER XII.

A man feels his rejection either in proportion
to his depth of feeling for the woman, or in
proportion to his depth of feeling for himself;
without severity it may be said, usually the
latter.

With Mark it was strongly the latter, and a
little of the former mixed in.

He had really admired Margaret very much ;
he was greatly puzzled to understand why she
had not admired him. He couldn't suppose it
was because he was poor that she would not
marry him, and he equally could not suppose it
was because she couldn't love him ; he therefore
declined upon the supposition that it was because
he had not given her time enough to discover
his good points. A girl — that is, a nice girl —
is a very inexperienced creature, he told himself,
and no doubt she had known so few men in her
beautiful, carefully supervised life, that she was
not able to see how superior he was to most
other fellows from whom she might have ex-
pected proposals. He was a gentleman, and
looked like one (a great advantage, this); he
was poor, certainly, but he had a future; his

manners and character — well, he didn't know
120

GALLIA. 121

anybody with better manners or character — this
frankly and without any egotism, in fact, speak-
ing as an outsider.

It is neither a man's nor a woman's fault that
a proposal is usually such a fearful and ridiculous
farrago. No woman with a sense of humour
can listen to it without inward smiles — supposing
that she is quite cool towards the man. If she
is not quite cool towards him, she takes it in as
well as the other woman who has no sense of
humour. For falling in love blots out a sense of
humour, of necessity, for the time being. Who
looses his falcon to the flight, leaving his hood
still on ? Yet is the proposing man more closely
hooded than the gay gosshawk. Mark did
remarkably well with his proposal, and made
very fair use of his materials ; it is not his fault
that details of it sound silly; all real proposals
sound rather silly, and no novelist in the world
but can make up a much sweeter and more
attractive one out of his own head.

He knew she was particular about some things,
Mark said to her, when the moment came (he
meant Leighton and his escapade by " some
things"). Well, he shouldn't like to brag about
it, but — and then he made the well-known speech
without which no proposal is really complete.
He wore that air of humility and seriousness,
combined with a rigid sense of right and wrong.
He wouldn't like to call himself a good man ; no
p 11

122 GALLIA.

man who sat beside Miss Essex could have the
presumption to call himself good ; but he would
say that most men would call him a very decent
specimen. He had " lived" to a certain extent
(he was very careful to put in this ambiguous
qualification, and tradition justified him ; no man
with any respect for himself ever leaves it out)
— to a certain extent he had lived the life of an
ordinary man of the world, but he had had his
limitations, and there were lengths to which he
had never gone. These were not things that
she would understand, nor that he would like to
speak of further, but, at any rate, he had lived
a sort of life that enabled him to come into the
presence of the woman he loved with his head
up because he could show a clean record.

Margaret was, as I have insisted more than
once, exceedingly inexperienced, and she was
inclined to think this very fine ; not knowing in
the least what it meant, and further unaware
that it formed part of the time-honoured shib-
boleth of proposal, she was decidedly impressed
by it. And if anything could have won her to
accept Gurdon, it would have been more of this
high-minded and yet humble expatiation on his
spotlessness.

Miss Essex looked prettier than ever, with her
dark-grey, serious eyes holding two tears which
never fell ; and Gurdon was then moved to take
her hand, very gently and respectfully. It was

GALLIA. 123

she who gave the pressure. " Thank you — thank
you so much," she said, rather brokenly, " for
what you have said. I feel very much — I mean
I am quite sure that — that — but, ob, please, Mr.
Gurdon, don't think me odious, but I really
never thought of you in that light, and I" —
with a good deal more of the same.

Thus the moment of deepest emotion was
reached over Gurdon's touching picture of the
precise degree and shade of grey in which he
had painted himself out of the devil's black
paint-pot.

Margaret felt it to have been a pathetic and
impressive moment in the interview, and in her
own mind afterwards she called him "poor
fellow" once or twice : whether because he had
not allowed himself a better time in this vicious
old world, or because she could not hand him
the reward of this praiseworthy self-denial, she
never explained to herself, not having the ana-
lytical temperament.

As was natural, she saw less of Gurdon in the
weeks that immediately followed, although it
had been arranged that this was not to interfere
with their " friendship." It was not likely to, as
it in no way trenched upon that most mythical
and shadowy of relations. Gurdon looked more
serious, talked a little less at the club, and
folded his lips ominously as he walked between
the Colonial Office and his rooms. He turned

124 GALLIA.

in one night and heard part of a concert at St.
James's Hall, but came out because it seemed to
him that he could not bear to hear a " Polonaise"
of Chopin's, which Margaret had played in-
differently well, faultlessly given by " some
foreign fellow, with a beastly head of hair," as
he mentally designated the eminent artist upon
the platform. Coming out into Piccadilly, he
ran against a man he knew slightly — that is, a
man he had known slightly for a number of
years. This individual, Lauriston by name, was
a good-natured, weak-minded being, with a taste
for what he called " sport," and night clubs, and
gardenias that reeked intoxicatingly of opopo-
nax as well as their own odious scent. Gurdon,
being " a serious-minded chap," had little in
common with Lauriston as a rule, but he was
just then at a loose end, and allowed himself to
be hailed and his arm taken, and finally borne
off in a fit of overdone chumminess to see some-
thing of which " ten stone," " six rounds," and a
" purse," formed descriptive elements. As a
matter of fact, Gurdon would just as soon have
sat at the National Sporting Club, and clapped
feebly, and listened to cheers, either raucous or
affectedly treble, as he would have done any-
thing else. In his own belief he was a badly
cut-up man, but he hoped he was " taking it as
a man ought;" without going into this point, he
was certainly taking it as a man often does. He

GALLIA. 125

sat in silence, with a half-smile of satire on his
face, and watched Lauriston hang over the pea-
cock-plush edge of the box, as he exchanged the
time of day with fat gentlemen in exceedingly-
tight check suits and a tendency to a display of
Parisian diamonds upon their ties.

It was late enough when Mark found himself
passing along Piccadilly on his way to his rooms
in Byder Street. Already the impression of his
unusual evening was passing out of his mind ; in
his younger days Mark had seen as much of that
sort of evening as a steady fellow ever does, and
he took it very calmly. Champagne in a big
tumbler did not matter greatly to him. He was
not unconsciously observant, as he had once told
Margaret ; the scenes of Piccadilly passed him
by, or he shook them off casually, and entered,
although unwillingly, upon his private gloom
again.

Suddenly, when he had passed one woman, a
shaft of recollection shot into his mind, and he
looked round instinctively. The- recollection
was accompanied by some revulsion of feeling,
but he turned with an impulse and raised his
hat.

" Miss Lemuel ?" he said. It was as much a
protest as a question, and for once the face that
met his had no smile.

" "Well, I never !" she exclaimed in surprise ;
" to think of its being you !"
11*

126 GALLIA.

" No," he replied ; " to think of its being you !
"Why are you out alone like this ? How are you
in- England ? Where is your father ?"

" Ah, well, that will be the whole story if I tell
you all that, won't it ?" She smiled now, but it
was half-heartedly. " We're in England because
father has a job here. He came over to sit to
Gilford for his ' Death of Greek Art' "

" Well, but how are you out at this time of
day ? But perhaps I am not minding my own
business as I ought 1" his tone became reserved.

" Perhaps you aren't. I'm looking for father,
if you want to know. Father has been drinking
a good bit lately, and I'm not sure how he'll get
through with this affair of Gilford's, unless I keep
a pretty tight hold on him. The landlady fired
us out of our lodgings to-day, and I got all packed
and taken to a friend's — well, she's the charwoman
who cleans Gilford's studio ; and then father said
he'd go and have a look round and come back
sharp for me when he'd settled something. I
waited till about one o'clock, and then I knew
something had happened, so I've been going
round the dens."

She told all this very simply, and it was
obviously only the inconvenience of her father's
action, mixed with a fear that he would not be
able to take up his "job," that disturbed her.
As they walked on together, Gurdon reflected
quickly. Though he had met her half a dozen

GALLIA. 127

times in Paris only, and they had never talked
much, he had an inexplicable liking for this girl.
Used to roughing it she might be, but he could
not allow her to walk alone down Piccadilly when
he was there to prevent it. He looked down at
her on to the top of her shabby little hat, as it
proved.

" Take my arm," he said curtly. " Your father
was to look for rooms, you say ? What if he
has found none — where have you to go V

" Nowhere," was all her answer.

" Well, we must devise something. Is it not
possible he may have returned to the char-
woman's while you have been out looking for
him ?"

" Yes, he might have done."

He could tell that she thought this very un-
likely.

" Well, let us get into a cab and go there at
once. Is not that the best thing to do ?"

She admitted that it might be ; and even
though he could have put her into a cab and sent
her oft", he believed it his duty to see her safely
even to that poor shelter. He hailed a cab, and
they drove away together down to Kensington.

On the way, she plucked up her spirits, and
told him many things that had happened in
Paris since the winter when he had been there.
At the end of May, Leighton had gone to Spain
for the summer. When he returned, Arsenie

128 GALLIA.

had made other arrangements, since when Leigh-
ton had ceased to live at his studio, and had
removed to a hotel meuble. He had become so
extravagant that he had been obliged to have
another man share his studio. His bill at the
restaurant where he fed grew so large that he
had had to move on to another. He had an
arrangement at the artists' colourman's to give
him all his studio studies in return for material,
and he had taken to working his Academies in
oil colours instead of charcoal, painting in a
tiger-skin and a drift of muslin afterwards, and
calling them " Apres le Bain," " Belle Baign-
euse," and kindred titles.

All this chatter rippled pleasantly through
Gur don's mind, and combining with the motion
of a good cab, soothed him considerably. Cara
Lemuel had a sharp and amusing tongue ; often
he was moved to a tired laugh at what she said ;
and when she took his hand and thanked him
for being so good to her, it seemed only natural
to put an arm round her thin shoulders with a
comforting pressure. _ Altogether, he did not
mind much how long this drive lasted.

But at length, in some of the narrow slummy
by-ways near Queen's Gate, the cab drew up,
they got out, and Cara undertook to find the
door.

Gurdon stopped irresolutely for a second, then
he told the man to wait, and followed her.

CHAPTER XIIL

Old Lemuel had not come in. That was the
first thing that struck Gordon when he passed
upstairs behind Cara. The key was below the
mat just where she had placed it, the paraffin
lamp was smelling as it had done ever since she
turned it down hours before. They sat down
opposite one another in the stuffy, evil-smelling
little room.

"What can have happened to father? Oh,
there must have been some accident!" Then
she cried. She was that simple sort of creature
that cried unrestrainedly and exuberantly when
she was sorry, even as she laughed when she
was glad. She dropped her face into her hands
with a howl. Her short brown curls parted
from the back of her neck, and fell forward in a
thick shock at each side. The pointed girlish
shoulders 6hook in a convulsive way. The backs
of her narrow arms, pressed to her sides, had
something young and pitiable about them; she
was a horribly lonely, forsaken little thing. Gur-
don made a quick step towards her, and patted
her reassuringly on the back.

" Come, this won't do," he said, with the,
i 129

130 GALLIA.

exaggerated cheerfulness one uses to a child.
"What is the good of making up your mind
that the very worst has happened? Depend
upon it, your father is with a friend somewhere.
There, that's right : be a woman."

He might have kissed her, perhaps, but the
thought of Margaret, whom some weeks ago he
had dreamed of kissing, prevented him for the
moment. Instead, he essayed more practical
comfort. He found a spirit-lamp among her
belongings, and with a little encouragement she
produced some cheap red wine, which he heated
and made her drink. She sat beside this medi-
tatively for a little, then she raised her crying
face, which had a prettiness about it in spite of
tears and reddened eyelids. This time, as he
looked at her, no thought of Margaret occurred
to him : his love for her had been compounded
of idealised passion and fancy — they are very
poor wear.

"With her jacket off, and in some soft, limp
sort of brown material, Cara looked pretty. Her
dark skin, ripe colour, and easy eye had a single
meaning. There are some women in the social
state, as it is at present, fitted exclusively for
" the oldest of all professions for women." They
are to be met in all ranks of life. "What sort of
wives do they make? "What sort of sweet-
hearts ? What sort of mothers ? "Whosoever
selects them for a position of any permanency

GALLIA. 131

is mistaken. "Women of abnormal sensuality,
of incurable lightness, are private scourges. In
a ballroom, for example, they will exercise every
one of the arts and lures that have only one in-
tention, then they will step into their carriages
and sweep away with a final glitter in their las-
civious eyes, and the poor creature in the street,
whom they would not touch, is their victim.

The friends of women are not wise to declare
that none are born scorpions.

That is the dark side of the picture. Of the
light side and its effect, Ghirdon is an example.
Since his refusal by Margaret Essex, he had been
fighting down a severe attack of passion ; this
night on which he came across Cara had sensu-
ally roused him. Under his cold, calm meas-
uring nature were buried smothered fires, on
whose embers no wind of circumstance had yet
blown strongly. His sensuality, as in other
words he had told Margaret, had been slight;
he made the mistake of imagining that he had
resisted such temptations, whereas they had, in
reality, never come his way, and he had never
felt or seen them. He had carried what he
called " decency" to the chilliest business pitch,
in a gentlemanly manner — that is, in the manner
usual to a fastidious gentleman. The time came
when, standing opposite Cara, he remembered
only one thing; remembered with the greatest
astonishment the means he had taken in the past

132 GALLIA.

to work himself up to the pitch of carrying
through certaiu experiences with some air of
relish. His training, his carefully nurtured ideas
upon these subjects, had led him, even when
alone, in his own mind and memory to banish the
recollection of moments of almost wholly forced
abandonment. He conceived a great horror of
that old self of his ; it passed over his mind as a
wave : whether he had found anything better or
not might be a question, he felt that his old feel-
ing had been wrong. His brain worked with
the spasmodic, whirring activity of the roulette
wheel. The girl was in his arms without his
having consciously taken her in them. Before
passion quite swamped reason, he was question-
ing her hurriedly, in a voice whose very tones
were quite new to him. The answers she made,
which were an encouragement to passion, would
have wounded love ; but Gurdon was not in a
condition to see distinctions, or to give feelings
names. Things themselves are infinitely less
confusing than the names they go by. One may
recognise the thing itself, and one may even un-
derstand and feel familiar with it, but, over and
above this, one must know its exact name. This
difficulty is increased because things are not
equally well named. The appositeness of all
names to the objects and feelings they describe
is nothing like so obvious as the appositeness of
the title pig for the animal pig ; for, as the old

GALLIA. 133

lady remarked, anybody could see for himself It
was a pig.

The moment you leave the dry-land region of
pigs and such-like easy instances of careful and
adequate nomenclature, you set forth upon a
turgid sea of difficulties. It is the things that
swim dimly below the surface of the thick water
that are so hard to recognise and to name.
Numberless people, be it said, sail out and
never suspect the existence of these things ; to
them they are unthinkable. Others are con-
scious of them, but avoid the effort of clear
comprehension and classification; to these they
are unnameable. And a larger body of people
than either of these, or indeed both these put
together, are content to name them wrongly and
confuse one hopelessly with another; to these
they are undistinguishable. Such things as
these, that fin slowly through the gloom of deep
green waters, are chiefly feelings. There are
among them passion, cruel and kind; desire,
physical and spiritual, the same in form, but
differing utterly in clearness of colouring: the
one swimming on his belly in the mud, the other
undulating through the bright weed, where the
light of day shines down. If love, the flying
fish, drop among them for a space, straightway
he is confused to his own hurt until he swoop
upward into the air again. The psychologist
with his water-telescope is apt to be as wrong
12

134 GALLIA.

as anyone, and this has made many sensible and
clever people decide that it is better to sit upon
the shore beside the pig — who is so like a pig
that you cannot mistake him ; or, if you sail over
the water, to keep your eyes lifted to the clouds
of tradition, superstition, and legend. It will
be a good day when one shall arise and tell us
whether it is happier to live than to know, and
at what level we should keep our dim, imperfect
human eyes, as we pass about in the world that
we think was made for us and that we have
improved for ourselves. If Gurdon's case could
have been put before Margaret Essex and Gallia
Hamesthwaite, — poor Gallia, away with her sick
mother in Algiers, living a life of pulses and
temperatures, and utterly divorced from her
previous interests, — how differently they would
have seen it ! Gallia, whose watchword used to
be " Truth" — Margaret, whose watchword was
" Goodness." And if it could have been put
before Gurdon himself, whose watchword was
" Decency," or before Leighton, whose was " Life,
and don't be ashamed of it" ?

Gurdon's justification for his action lay in the
fact that he had been won from his even, decent
life when he fell in love with Margaret Essex.
The hopes that had then risen in him had
altered the aspect of his mind. His emotional
territory had been changed in character by the
volcanic upheavals during those weeks of close

GALLIA. 135

intercourse. He had sat in the little Hammer-
smith drawing-room and watched Margaret's
fine flower-like hands moving over the yellow
keyboard of the old sweet Broadwood, and his
cold nature had warmed and warmed as he
looked.

" Ah, the throats of thunder I

Ah, the dulcet lips !
Ah, the gracious tyrannies

Of her finger-tips !"

Or he had seen her singing. Margaret singing
was a picture for the gods. Then they had
talked a long time about all sorts of abstract
matters ; and the conversation had been of that
curious kind which love directs, of which love is
ever the under-note. Then, when he went into
town again and sat at dinner by himself at the
club, or read in his own rooms afterwards, the
mist of Margaret's influence still hung in the air
around him. It was not that she gave him any
token of love, or let drop one word on which
he could build, but she was gracious, smiling,
and her reception of him was kind, and she
would play and sing when he asked her, liking
apparently to give him pleasure ; liking, at any
rate, to make music for one who seemed to love
it as any musical-souled being will.

H he had been a man of high moral tone
(instead of being what he was, a man of " decent"
moral tone), he might have had a quarrel against

136 GALLIA.

her for destroying the placid fabric of his daily
life, and then turning him off, to weave the frag-
ments of it in what pattern he could, accom-
modating the red thread of passion, of which he
was conscious for the first time.

He had come through all the experiences of
the single man who, loving one woman, alters
and rearranges his future to admit her share in
it ; he had tuned himself up to the new pitch of
marriage ; he had fostered, nurtured, been glad
of the new feelings that had come to him, and
which in that particular connection were credit-
able and decent, and then — he had been sent
away; sent away single and unsatisfied, with
havoc in his heart. But the feelings were still
there. He was softened, warmed, plastic, and
single. Whereupon, the girl Lemuel crossed
his path, and attracted his quickened sympathies.
Here was where he might give himself rein and
be no wise to blame : he assured himself on this
point before he took her, for, as he said to him-
self, he was not a blackguard. He did not love
her, although, oddly enough, he told himself that
he did ; he did not, for if he had, he would have
hated the French artist of whom she naively
told him ; as it was, that was his permission.
And not having a mind that traced its inspira-
tions to their sources, Gurdon was unaware that
Margaret Essex was a more or less direct cause
of his protection of Cara.

CHAPTER XIV. -

It is difficult to understand why, as Gallia
Hamesthwaite sat beside her dead mother, in
the big bedroom of the white hotel upon the
hillside, she should have thought of Dark Essex.
At a moment so lonely that it seemed to her an
iron gateway had closed across the avenue of life,
and she should never go any farther down that
avenue, this man, with whom, after all, she had
never been closely intimate, who had certainly
never been kind to her, seemed nearer to her
than any other human being. If there were
anyone in the world whose hand-clasp she
would have been passionately glad of, that per-
son was Essex.

He had not been very often in her mind
during the three months' sojourn in Algiers;
she had, during that time, thought almost cease-
lessly of her mother. Lady Hamesthwaite had
not benefited by the change; she had seemed
wonderfully feeble, with an unexplained, gentle,
sweet-natured feebleness, which grew only more
evident day by day. In the mornings, Gallia
had walked beside her invalid chair ; in the after-
noons she had taken her place in the comfortable
European victoria which had been sent over
12* 187

138 GALLIA.

from France for their use. In between whiles
she seemed to have read aloud an infinitude of
novels and books of travel, looking up frequently
to see if her mother's cheeks were flushing with
fever, or if she appeared ready for a little sleep.

At first Gallia had provided herself with books
that interested her more, and when the poor
lady laid her head back on the cushions and
closed her eyelids, Gallia had been wont to dip
into these more congenial volumes. But after a
time she could not give them her attention, and
she put them aside and sat quietly in her place,
letting her eyes wander to and fro between her
mother's face and the view from the window of
the white town down the hill.

"When Lady Hamesthwaite's illness became
more marked, when she had to send for her
father, her thoughts and her daily life became
confused : she lived in a dream. She could not
have remembered, at the end of the day, whether
some scene by her mother's bedside had hap-
pened in reality, or whether her brain had
pictured it for her in a terrified foresight into
what was coming upon them.

" And most of the time while she was well, I
lived away from her, and thought it a great
thing to follow out my own life and my own
ideas. Why couldn't I have postponed that?
I shall have such a long time for my own life and
my own ideas, and I have had so short a time

GALLIA. 139

with mother! But I don't think I am ever
going to care for the things I used to care for !
Perhaps it is really right, after all, to sacrifice
oneself to other people and live for them — but to
me that has always seemed so immoral.''

Poor Gallia sighed away the wreckage of her
creeds and devoted herself, as whole-souledly as
though she had never had any, to the duty and
the privilege of nursing her mother, to whom she
felt herself almost a stranger.

And Lady Hamesthwaite died because she
had to ; died in a fit of beautiful, painless un-
consciousness, with her daughter and nurse be-
side her, her husband in England, and no good-
byes or last words of any kind. On the next
day, when the funeral was to take place, Gallia
spent the long hours of the morning in the
darkened room beside the coffin ; spent it with
her thoughts. She was not crying — had not
cried at all. Tears, at moments of 'emotion,
seemed to be more remote even than laughter
from Gallia's nature. The habit of her mind
reasserted itself, and she stared before her, fol-
lowing through winding ways the ideas that arose
like phantoms and fled in front of her.

" What happiness or pleasure have I ever had
from mother?" she asked herself honestly.
" What has she meant in my life — sweet woman
that she was ? Almost nothing ! I have hardly
known her, really ; there has been no communion

140 GALLIA.

between our minds, and none in our lives. Now
she is dead, and — unless remorse for what was
quite right and should not have been helped
changes me — the loss is hers. How is my life
any different ? If I am still honest, if I do not
start to build up in my mind the notion that
mother was everything to me, and that now she
is gone, all is gone — if I don't teach myself that
pious lie, my life will be just the same. Can I
have ever loved her at all ? If I had ever loved
her, I must have shown it in some fashion — and
I don't remember that I ever did. It would be
far more comfortable and far more respectable
to give way to paroxysms of grief now, to fling
myself about, to shriek to her sweet body lying
here, and say, ' Mother, I always loved you, and
I am finding it out too late !' "

The girl paused ; Bhe had a sudden impulse to
do this, she had a sudden wonder if perhaps this
was, after all, what she meant. But Gallia had
been too long accustomed to tell herself what she
felt, having decided that after an interview with
what it was reasonable for her to feel, and she
lifted her sad look from the coifin and went on
with her thoughts again.

" All the time mother loved me ; Aunt Celia
knew, and her letters might have told me, only,
somehow, I knew it. Why is all the sweetness
and passion and exquisiteness confined to the
side of one party to the contract ; why is it so

GALLIA. 141

certainly sweet to be a mother, — apparently no
matter of what sort of child, — and why has the
child on its side no instinctive sense of the ex-
quisiteness of parentage?" She mused a long
time upon this theme, and then another thought
rose before her, and she followed it, as before,
through the by-ways of her strange mind.

" The charm of motherhood must be innate :
it has nothing to do with the child, or how it turns
out, or what it proves to be. It is started once
for all at the child's birth-time, and every woman
has the sense of motherhood according to her
emotional capacity. A mother has those feel-
ings, which are more than mere love, because
she has done something for the child, because
she has borne it. She has performed a sort of
self-sacrifice, which I have always thought the
most subtle kind of selfishness in the world.
Motherhood is selfish after all. So it comes in
with my belief that the highest sort of selfishness
is the only true and good religion — the only one
that really makes for goodness. A woman gets
a good deal out of motherhood ; more than she
does out of marriage : motherhood is, on the
whole, better suited to her than marriage, I
believe."

She got off her chair and looked into the
coffin, which was filled with flowers, Bave where
her mother's exquisite hands were crossed on
her breast, and where her face, immeasurably

142 GALLIA.

more beautiful than it had been in life, with the
colouring still perfect in its transparent delicacy,
looked up at her with shut eyes.

" Were you very happy with father, I wonder ?
or did you really love my coming more than all
the rest ?" she asked gently and wistfully of the
quiet face. "I wish you could have told me
before you went which is best — love or mother-
hood? At this minute, mother, you are the
most beautiful woman in the world ; your spirit
may be gone from your body, but it has left its
loveliest reflection on your face. If only you
could have told me that one woman's secret !"

It was characteristic of Gallia that, in spite of
her amazing belief regarding selfishness and its
continuous practice as the highest form of virtue,
the questions she framed just then were entirely
abstract ones. She was not thinking of love for
herself, she was not remembering how she had
said good-bye to it in that upstairs room in
Grosvenor Place. She was asking because she
would have liked to know. Perhaps she thought
her mother's spirit might have lent her some
beam of the illumination it must by that time
have found in the place whither it was gone.

She was called away to receive her father, who
had been telegraphed for several days before,
and travelling with greatest possible speed, had
arrived too late.

He looked a very broken man indeed, as he

GALLIA. 143

advanced into the sitting-room and met his
daughter. One look at Gallia's face told him
his wife was dead, and he could for the moment
only take her two hands, and with his head
turned away to hide his grief, press them with
the terrible shuddering pressure of a man in the
first throes of grief.

She took him silently to the room, and, closing
the door, let him find his way through the dim
light to his wife's coffin.

In two hours he came out, but she did not see
him ; he had gone to his own room, and was to
be left undisturbed till the funeral started, so his
man brought word.

So Gallia went back to be companion to the
dead woman till the narrow door should be shut
that was to close her from this world — and it
was then that the yearning arose in her for the
hand-clasp of someone she loved — and she
thought of Dark Essex.

She had no grudge against him that he did
not love her, and, on the whole, she had for-
given him the method in which he had ex-
plained this to her. It made no difference to
her love for him, which was deep, had not grown
from liking, and was unaffected by manifesta-
tions of dislike ; which was also entirely without
vanity or egotism, and had no support from his
admiration or love of her ; which was, therefore,
if one may judge by its immunity from these

144 GALLIA.

earthly characteristics, the test kind of love
there is.

If, by some impossible occurrence, he could be
with her for five minutes ! if, without speaking,
she could have him clasp her hand firmly for
one moment !

" I believe I should even be able to bear it if
he were a little sorry for me. I wonder if it
would touch him to hear that someone — anyone
whom he knew — had lost her mother? I
wonder if he would give the news one second's
pity?"

She heard them in the adjoining room walking
about, waiting for her to come out.

" Yes ; I think he would be different now, and
also — I know he wouldn't. Good-bye — for just
now, mother : it has not all been for nothing.
If you loved me all my life, some time, no doubt,
we shall meet, and I will love you. I would
have loved you if you had been my child, and,
perhaps, when I am a mother myself, my child
may be like you, and I shall love it, and make
the score even in that way."

She took one of the white roses that lay near
her mother's hands and kissed it, and began to
put it inside her dress; then she stopped and
looked at the slim bud again.

"Now, why do I do that?" she thought; "it
will die, and go brown, and all crumble, and I
shall have it in a piece of paper somewhere, and

GALLIA. 145

forget where I've put it, and it will be forgotten,
and get lost, or be dropped. No; one is not
meant to remember — as we know by the sad
case of all souvenirs. Mother, I'll give you back
your rose. How much I remember you, I shall
see in time," — she smiled anxiously, — " but I will
not give my humanity a chance to insult your
memory."

And these odd words were the last Gallia ever
said to her mother.

13

CHAPTER XV.

Mrs. Leighton was very sorry for her niece.
" It is the greatest possible misfortune for Gallia,"
said the wise old lady. " In time she would have
come to know her mother, and, of course, to love
her ; and now — ah, it is a terrible misfortune."
For Mrs. Leighton did not mistake for love the
care and kindness Gallia had shown to her
mother ; she herself had a fairly clear perception
of the bent of Gallia's mind, and so far she be-
lieved that the girl lived entirely within herself,
and that she had no friends.

If it be not good for man to live alone, it is
even worse for woman, the old lady believed.
Gallia must now be three or four-and-twenty,
and she had no one to love. Eor Lord Hames-
thwaite, although a good and amiable and even
a distinguished gentleman, was not the kind of
man anybody would have made the mistake of
loving. Besides, since his wife's death he had
immersed himself more deeply still in politics.
During the Easter recess he addressed meetings
in the provinces, and worked even harder than
while Parliament was sitting. Gallia lived with
him in Grosvenor Place, but she was able to

146

GALLIA. 147

pursue an almost entirely separate existence in
the big house, for there were no entertainments
and few visitors during the first months of
mourning. She had not returned immediately
to England after the loss of her mother; she
had spent two months very quietly in a small
mountain town in the Alpes Maritimes. Here,
accompanied only by her mother's maid, a con-
ventional-minded French servant who suffered
untold tortures of tristesse and ennui, she had
lived and dreamed the days away ; reading very
little, and quite unconsciously hastening the
departure of certain qualities of her youth and
the charm that she had never recognised in her-
self and never used — unless dimly among her
fellow-students at Oxford in the old days.

She liked to watch the mule traffic up the
steep rocky path, she liked to look at the people
pursuing their everyday avocations. She took
no photographs, collected no flowers, made no
sketches, put no impressions on paper. She
merely walked and stood about, a curious smile
of observance and silent kindliness upon her
face. She made no charities, intruded in no
kitchens, was known only by sight, and received
none of the sentimental demonstrations of affec-
tion such as are histrionically proper to a situa-
tion of the kind.

Her maid, with thimble in pocket and scissors
at her side, turned over sadly the four simple

148 GALLIA.

dresses that formed Gallia's entire wardrobe at
this time. They were very strange dresses in-
deed. The dressmaker in Nice, a very im-
portant artiste, had had the fashioning of them,
and never remembered having like restrictions
imposed upon her. As they expressed in a
measure Gallia's mind at this time, they have a
certain interest. All were black, all were made
in the same manner, absolutely plain in skirt,
with bodice and band, high to the neck and
long to the wrists, no fleck of white or flake of
cambric anywhere at all. They tied at the
throat with a black satin bow, and each was
lined in the thickest satin of dove grey — though
of this their wearer was possibly never aware :
a dressmaker must have some excuse for the
bill. In the cool mornings the maid laid out
the cloth gown; on warm mornings the soft
black linen. Also, according to the temperature
of the evening, Gallia passed the last three hours
of her day in velvet or in silk. She was far too
clever a girl not to have taken great pains with
her dress in her happier days, and she had a
beautiful figure of the heaven-born kind; now,
however, she watched with a sense of dreary
amusement the careful routine of her bedroom
so punctually performed.

"Mademoiselle met?" occurred as regularly
twice a day as though a galaxy of gowns was
to be chosen from ; and " Celle de sole" Gallia

GALLIA. 149

would answer, or " Celui en velours," as the case
of robe or costume came up for decision.

It was in one of these same simple vestures
that she made her appearance in her aunt's
drawing-room, about a week after she came
home. Mrs. Leighton was herself in mourning,
but it was a mourning most tastefully tempered
to a garish world. She felt herself shudder
when Gallia came in and sat among the pink
and pale blue sofas, some of which were believed
to have belonged to the very Louis themselves.
The old lady was seated in what she called her
" Salon Trianon," and there was someone else
in the room whom Gallia did not immediately
observe; someone who wore the coolest of
dresses of a June green shade, a muslin fichu,
and a muslin hat with hop- wreaths on it;
someone who sat near a green curtain, and
was, that day, the very prettiest thing in Ken-
sington.

"I think you know Margaret Essex?" said
the hostess, as Gallia's severe folds settled them-
selves in the most frivolous of seats, and seemed
to hold aloof from a carpet strewn with baskets
tied with ribbons, from which pink roses poured
luxuriantly.

The girls said something and shook hands.
Each was interested in the other. Of course
Margaret remarked that her brother knew
Gallia well in Oxford.

13*

150 GALLIA.

"I think I feel a little alarmed about Miss
Hamesthwaite's brain capacity in consequence
of what he has said," she added smilingly, and
she felt even more alarmed at the look Gallia
bent on her, although it was only a look of
inquiry. But very soon Miss Essex went away,
feeling certain that the aunt and niece had not
met for some time, and guessing that Mrs.
Leighton must have much to hear from Gallia.
Nothing surprised her more than Miss Hames-
thwaite's simple request that she would come
and see her in Grosvenor Place.

" I shall be so very pleased to," Margaret had
said cordially; and, "You will find that the
very sweetest piece of china in London," Mrs.
Leighton had remarked when the door closed
on her pretty visitor.

" I thought it would be interesting to inspect
a real girl," Gallia said tranquilly; " they are so
very rare."

And indeed a tropical butterfly couldn't have
seemed a less familiar thing to her than did
Margaret.

" And now, darling, tell me all about dearest
Julia."

Mrs. Leighton had risen, and as she spoke she
pressed her niece's firm shoulders tremulously,
and sat down close to her and took her hand.

"Ah, my love, my love!" she sighed.

Gallia had known this interview was before

GALLIA. 151

her, and had been bracing herself for it for a
long time. Only the knowledge that Aunt
Celia had loved her mother, and particularly the
knowledge that her mother had loved Aunt
Celia, had enabled her to bear it as she did ; but
she marvelled at the awful sort of hardness in
her voice and in her heart as she detailed the
history of those weeks.

Sbe thought afterwards that it was then that
she had noticed the change in her that was
afterwards so clearly marked; a change that
altered her whole manner and character, no
less than it altered her face and her dress. Mrs.
Leighton also noticed this change, and was more
assured than ever of the misfortune Lady
Hamesthwaite's death had been to the lonely
girl. It was not that Gallia's face was older,
but it had altered. Her idle, out-of-door
mountain life had made her more beautifully
healthy than usual, and her eye, instead of
seeming clouded by the impossible problems
she had a taste for considering, had the far
outward look of a person who had thought
through something, who had found foothold
beyond. I think it was Herbert Spencer who
considered that a thinker should regard each
solution reached, not as solid ground, but as a
raft that would bear him for a time. Gallia,
having swum strongly in fell currents, had
climbed to a new raft.

152 GALLIA.

An hour later, when most of the sorrowful
particulars had been given, and silences were
becoming frequent in the room, the butler made
his appearance, and announced that Mr. Gurdon
was below, and had inquired if Mrs. Leighton
would receive him.

" Of course, dear, I have been seeing nobody"
said the old lady pathetically to her niece.
" Yes, Linton, say to Mr. Gurdon that I shall
be glad if he will wait a little in the library."

" I am just going, Aunt Celia ; I think I will
say good-bye at once. You will come and see
me soon, will you not ?"

Noticing this leave-taking, Linton waited by
the door to show out Miss Hamesthwaite ; and
thus it was that Gurdon, sufficiently familiar in
the house to put aside some of the formalities,
and standing therefore half in and half outside
the library door, examining an amazing Moorish
portiere that had been a present from Lady
Hamesthwaite to her stepsister, saw a lady come
downstairs of whose face and figure he caught
just one astonishing glimpse. Gallia never no-
ticed him at all — she was looking straight in
front of her, and waiting while the butler looked
for her carriage.

" What a magnificent girl !" said Gurdon to
himself, as he followed a footman to the drawing-
room.

CHAPTER XVI.

One side of Edwards Square is formed by
the backs and belongings of bouses fronting the
Kensington High Street, the other two sides by
very nice small houses looking into Edwards
Square garden, the fourth side by a row of in-
teresting buildings which were originally stables,
and in some cases are so still, but of which
many have been appropriated to other and more
amusing purposes. They are buildings which
differ fundamentally from the average of all Lon-
don buildings in that they have a character; this
character is of the most romantic and picturesque
kind — it is to have no character. You look at
them as you pass by, — or at least you would
look at them if you did pass by, — and feel that
anything might happen in them — that they
might be anything; you know that Gaboriau
would have made thousands of francs out of
any one of them ; you wonder how they have
escaped F. W. Eobinson. As a matter of strict
fact, you never do pass by Edwards Square —
nobody ever does. There is no reason to enter
its quiet and very agreeable precincts unless you
live there — unless your destination be your own

153

154 GALLIA.

front door, on one side of the square or the
other.

The few people, other than the residents, who
have ever come there have done so because they
have been lost, deservedly, in a vain attempt
to find that non-existent thoroughfare between
South Kensington and Kensington High Street.
It was when once so lost that Gurdon came
there. He entered the square from the South
Kensington side, and looked about him in his
quick, clear-headed way. On the wide side of
him stretched forward the row of quiet houses,
on the other, in a horizontal direction, the row
of buildings which were once stables. He
worked upon the paving-stone with the ferule
of his umbrella in a moment of thought. Then
he turned upon his left, walked down past the
buildings, stopped for a moment to copy the
address on a notice-board above one of them,
turned back upon his tracks, and was in the
High Street in two minutes.

The building that bore that notice of " To let"
lay about the middle of the row. It had a
coach-house door painted green ; a harness-room
door in the same colour, and above this second
door a window, which had obviously replaced
the flap door to a hayloft. There was also a
good skylight, which showed signs of having
been improved. In a word, a stable made into
a studio.

GALLIA. 155

On an evening when the blackened trees and
shrubs were heartening up in a pale green man-
ner inside the garden railings; when sparrows
were chirping in the trees in a way to suggest
only the sharpening of dozens of slate-pencils,
combined with the hearthstoning of dozens of
steps, there mixed with these indications of a
metropolitan spring evening the cricket-note of
a guitar, that seemed to be played in a purposely
subdued manner by a very skilful hand. In
chorus with the guitar, two siskins in a cage
beside the coach-house door woke up and began
in an irresponsible way a sort of tune to which
they were unaccustomed. Whether the guitar,
or a shaft of late sunlight that invaded the cage,
had aroused them, one could not know; but
soon the guitar ceased, the door opened, and a
girl came out and reached up for the cage, and
bore the siskins, in a futile flutter, to the room
within.

Inside, the harness room wore the air of a
hall or anteroom, and a curtain crossed the
approach to the coach-house or studio, which
was a long, narrow apartment, matchboarded
and painted green, and could not have made a
single brougham feel more at home than the
young woman and the tea-kettle and the sofa
looked.

The wooden platform on castors, which had
supported a model in a chair many times, was

156 GALLIA.

covered with a mattress and some rugs and
cushions, and made an odd sort of lounge, which
travelled slightly when one sank upon it.

Hereon the girl flung herself, and picked up
the guitar angrily, like a person who, although
tired of its companionship, had nothing else to
talk with.

The guitar spoke, in response to her sweeps
and clutches upon its strings, and her ill-trained
but effective little voice scraped out the phrases
of a gipsy song. In between the verses, which
were innumerable, the guitar stormed, sobbed,
or twittered, as demanded by its wilful friend,
with a sympathy which, though mechanical,
seemed spontaneous and personal to itself.

Cara Lemuel's playing was as unlike that of
the myriad young women who play the guitar
" a little" as any playing could well be. Her
mother had been a Spanish gipsy before she
became a model, and long before the days of
which she had any memory, the girl had carried
the shabbiest of tambourines among the cafe
tables in shabby parts of Seville.

The two siskins, now hung on a nail upon
the inside of the big coach-house door (which
was no longer made to open) shrugged their
wings as they listened, and put away their bills
at this evening hour safely for the night amid a
plumage of which they made the very most.
Tiring at last of her playing, the guitar was laid

GALLIA. 157

aside, and Cara slept as easily and simply as she
had often slept before on the sofas of other
studios in Paris. "When Gurdon came in some
hours later, she was just awaking, and her
awaking was as easy and smiling as her sleep.
Irritation marks the waking of most western-
bred beings; smiles dawned slowly upon the
features of the southern Cara.

"Don't move, little woman, you look so
pretty," Gurdon said, as he threw his bag into
a corner. "I've come for a couple of hours
only, and have to dress and be at the other end
of London by half-past eleven. Any coffee ?"

She pointed lazily to a covered pot upon the
stove, and he found himself a cup upon a shelf
and sat down beside her. She did not talk
much, but she smiled a great deal, and was
caressing in a very attractive manner, and her
black-brown hair, which was of a locky char-
racter, heavy, full of form, and making effective
masses no matter how arranged, fell against his
cheek as she kissed him, and had a spicy scent
about it which was delicious and a little intoxi-
cating.

"I have a new song for you," she said; " at
least I have remembered it bit by bit, and I ex-
pect my mother used to sing it. What a pity
you don't know Spanish !"

"You shall teach me Spanish. I learn lan-
guages pretty easily, and it will be a good thing
14

158 GALLIA.

for me to know a little Spanish." Gordon's
mind, characteristically, saw the proposition at
once in the light of its possible advantage to
himself.

" Well, now, I'll tell you. This is the song
of a gipsy girl who loves a man not of her own
people, and she is saying all the time, in each
verse, how he is so white and so fair and that
sort of thing, and the chorus always is — oh, how
would it be in English ? It won't sound a bit
the same, but she always sings —

' So in the chestnut avenue,

All the day I wander, wander ;
This side of the hill path

The brown chestnuts grow ;
And white magnolia blossoms shine

In the dark gardens down below.'

Oh, I've made a rhyme, haven't I ? "Well, now,
I'll sing it to you. First, it's about the lover, all
very quiet like this."

She bent over the guitar and picked a mourn-
ful prelude from the strings; then her voice,
dramatic in spite of, or perhaps because of, its
want of training, rose in the recitative of the
verse part. Gurdon listened; he was passion-
ately fond of music, or rather of singing, and he
looked as much as he listened. Cara's small
curved brown fingers, thin and taper, with the
articulations appearing whitish through the skin,
skipped nimble above the strings, and she bent

GALLIA. 159

lower over the neck of the instrument, her hair
falling in free locks from her head ; but for the
chorus head and hair were jerked backwards,
the guitar was clutched passionately against her
body, and the sadness of the weird gipsy plaint
rang out in a very agony of descriptive music.

" Sing that bit that begins ' Yo soy la castafia
marron' again," cried Grurdon; " that's the bit I
like!"

" Ah, that's ' I, the brown chestnut,' " Cara
said, smiling with immense fascination in his
face. Then she shot from her low seat and
stood a dozen feet away, in the attitude so pecu-
liar to Spanish women, the shoulders and head
thrown far back, one foot advanced, her guitar
seeming to strain upon the troubadour ribbon
that passed round her right shoulder. Thus she
sang the chorus with a stormy melancholy; at
the end, sweeping the guitar behind her back,
where her left hand held it head downwards,
she stepped the opening movements of one of
those Spanish dances, so haughty, so restrained,
so solemn, that they seem to double the burning
of the fire beneath.

She was below the medium height, but with
the national port of head and shoulders, she
seemed a queen in stature, and the effect was
electric when a few swift paces brought her
with a laugh to Grurdon's feet. Neither of these
two loved the other, but passion was a religion

160 GALLIA.

with the half-Spanish creature, and religion will
soon become a habit. To toy dramatically and
convincingly with the simulacra of strong feeling
is just as successful, is perhaps more successful
a means of arousing passion in another, and
Gurdon found an unnatural abandon made easy
to him by the wiles and magic of the girl's walk,
or song, or strange dance. He took the guitar
from her neck and caught her in his arms and
feasted upon her face.

CHAPTEE XVII.

The friendship which grew up between Mar-
garet Essex and Gallia was wholly of Miss
Hamesthwaite's making ; from the first and to
the last she frightened the picturesque Margaret
considerably. Margaret would have confessed
to an interest in her conversation, would have
admitted volubly a deep admiration of her man-
ner, mind, and appearance, but would have been
conscious all the time of the courage of a tor-
toise-shell guinea-pig when she found herself in
her friend's society. The turn in the Park which
they were now taking, Margaret having lunched
— timidly and tUe-a-tete — in Q-rosvenor Place,
was entirely Gallia's idea, and had been under-
taken with the excuse of seeing Miss Essex on
her homeward way ; but the unlooked-for appa-
rition of Gertrude Janion was an accident, and
the sort of accident that Margaret deplored.

As the three walked along together, they pre-
sented the oddest contrast : Gallia, in the middle,
was as severe as black of the plainest cut could
make her; Margaret, on her left, was draped
rather than clothed in Madonna blue, softened
with lace the colour of old stucco, and wore a
hat with wide black eaves arching over her palely
l 14* 161

162 GALLIA.

brilliant hair, the whole deftly combined to create
the air of inevitability that a really becoming
gown will ever present.

Beside these two Miss Janion felt happy that
she knew how to dress, and was at that moment,
as at every moment of her public appearance,
dressed to perfection. To be fashionably clad
is given to many women, and often a perfectly
original personality is concealed by clothes
which are original only within the strictest
limits ; it is unusual to issue from the hands of
Felix or of "Worth in a garment which, besides
taking rank as their latest and most wonderful
creation, has also the added merit of describing
exactly its wearer's mental plane. The Janion
girl was in herself exactly what her clothes
looked ; as it happened, neither Worth nor
Felix had the credit of her, though she would
have disgraced neither. It was her proud boast
that she dressed on £250 a year, " for every-
thing, my dear girl," and she could certainly, as
regards " smartness," have cut out women with
three times that sum at disposal.

She was a small, very neatly built person;
nothing was exaggerated about her figure.
Nature had been friendly towards her, and even
seemed to know her aspirations from the begin-
ning, and to sympathise with them ; had dowered
her with a waist that needed wonderfully little
compression, and bore that little remarkably

GALLIA. 163

well ; had given her a beautifully modelled
throat, bust, and arms : the throat and arms she
left alone and was glad of; the bust she enhanced
artificially, in obedience to the prevailing notion
that a young woman shall not await nature's own
development.

With regard to features, she had nothing to
complain of; she was not really pretty, and so
the effect of prettiness which she never failed to
make was all the more meritorious. The acute
angle of her jaw, which made her face, broad at
the brows, come off to a very sprightly point,
was much in her favour ; so were her eyebrows,
which had a double curve in that the sharp,
closely feathered ends of them turned upwards
again. Certainly, her eyebrows were most
piquant. As to complexion, she would tell
you frankly that she had always found the
" Norwich man" best of anyone ; you could rely
on his things, and they were not so madly expen-
sive as some of the other people's.

" He doesn't sell that Sauce Bechamel sort of
stuff for evening wear, and then swear that it's
not a paint, only a ' cream,' as most of the other
people do," she would exclaim, in her very high,
shrill little voice.

Perfect frankness about these various aids to
beauty was Miss Janion's line.

To Gallia, such a woman was what the dis-
covery of the ass-like horse of the Central Asian

164 GALLIA.

plains was to Przevalsky : she listened eagerly,
greedily, with her face all lighted up, to the
stream of chatter about laces and people and
powder, and silk-covered hair-pins, and the last
book, and Mrs. Tree's dresses in the last play,
and the new system of paying a yearly sum to a
milliner and taking your hats on hire by the
week or fortnight, and other kindred topics,
very brilliantly touched on. Margaret, her grey
eyes shining, her face beneath the delicate, sun-
beamy colour which was its most usual surface,
listened in horror, wondering vaguely what on
earth Miss Hamesthwaite would think, and if
she would take Gertrude to be a type of all her
companions.

So engrossed were the three, that in the crowd
they missed seeing two well-known faces ; a rare
thing for the Janion girl, who had the fashion-
able trick to a nicety, of seeing and not seeing
everybody at her own expedient whim.

" Hullo ! A queer team for a troika !" ex-
claimed Lauriston, who had just joined Gurdon
and Dark Essex, when his eyeglass focussed the
backs of the three girls.

Gurdon was on horseback (he rode every day
while he was in London, because all the men who
succeeded in climbing into big places in the Ser-
vices rode every day while they were in London,
and were in the habit of saying they could never
have lived without it). He looked round quickly.

GALLIA. 165

" Your sister, Essex, and I believe" —

" Miss Hamesthwaite in the middle," said
Lauriston glibly, " and the Janionette on the oft'.
Think I'll catch up with them and hear how they
are getting on. I've often wanted to know Miss
Hamesthwaite, and the little girl will introduce
me."

" Should we all move down ?" Gurdon in-
quired tentatively.

" I shall reserve the pleasure for another occa-
sion," Essex said, with his stone smile.

Gurdon had by this time thought that more
suitable surroundings might be found for his in-
troduction to Lord Hamesthwaite's daughter ; so
Lauriston strolled off alone, and having become
exceedingly short-sighted, owing to his lifelong
habit of insisting that he was so, failed to dis-
cover the trio, and brought up ignominiously
beside a very brilliantly-painted and high-hung
barouche, the occupant of which would have
been (so she always declared) a marchioness in
actual fact, if divorce were on a sensible basis
in this foolish old country.

" Your sister is a great friend of Miss Hames-
thwaite's," Gurdon said, looking down very
keenly upon, as it happened, the dazzling disc
of Essex's silk hat.

" They meet pretty frequently, I believe, but I
fail to apprehend why either of them should take
up Miss Janion."

166 GALLIA.

" I have met Miss Janion, I fancy, at a ball."

" A subscription ball."

" I believe it was."

" It certainly would be."

" Is a subscription ball to be made a cause of
reproach in your exclusive mind ?" Mark asked
lightly.

" Far from it. I have, all unknown to her, a
deep and lasting admiration for Miss Janion.
She is the most unaffected woman I know, save
one. She is incurably vulgar, she is shrewd
enough to know it, and yet I have never found
her making the least attempt to disguise it.
She doesn't pose. My sister does pose a very
little, and it comes near to spoiling her. She
thinks she cares for art, but that will pass off
quite satisfactorily when she marries."

" You are against a woman having an interest,
then?"

" My dear Gurdon, I don't believe I have
even got an opinion about women. A quiet
man doesn't need to have, nowadays. Women
have taken men's opinions of them for granted,
and there is nothing they seem to quote with
more freedom. But I know," he yawned, quite
genuinely, " I'm on the safe side. I'm ' against'
nothing. If I were, it might be against a woman
having more than two interests — herself and
the man she marries."

" And her children ?"

QALLIA. 167

" You will not prevent a woman having an
interest in her children if she has been woman
enough to have had an interest in herself and
her husband. And as far as my observation
goes, the posing woman will care for her children
too. She can't afford not to. Maternity is a
strong pose with your platform woman. She
has to be regarded as a 'thorough wife and
mother,' it fills the cheap seats so. Yes, women
have a lot of courage. But I don't believe the
woman breathes, who, if she didn't care for her
children, would have the courage to say so.
Which brings us back to Miss Janion, who never
poses."

" If my memory of Miss Janion is correct, she
wore a very low dress at the ball ; I remember
this because she asked me if I thought it too
low, and I was a good deal embarrassed."

Essex laughed ; just a couple of bars of deep,
rich-noted laughter, then he drooped his head,
leaned upon the railings, and went on making a
little mound of sand, and burying a small tuft
of grass with his foot.

" But, as I was going to say, she is nothing
like so attractive a woman as your sister."

Essex raised his eyes with a serious expression
in them. It was as though he had half ex-
pected Grurdon to discuss his sister in the same
tone they had used concerning Miss Janion, but
Grurdon had no such idea, and Essex, reassured,

168 GALLIA.

spoke in the way and with the conviction he
always showed when he mentioned his sister.

"She is the only type of woman left us,
capable of attracting in the romantic way," he
said thoughtfully. " This sort of subject comes
easy to me just now, because, as I think I told
you before we left the club, my publishers rec-
ommend the expansion of that monograph of
mine into a book, and I've been working upon
it for the past two months at a quiet little place
I've found in Surrey. In The Comparison of
Emotion in the Human and other Animals, most
of the arguments against Darwin are drawn
from an unprejudiced consideration of the emo-
tional capacity in women. I have decided to
recognise three kinds of attraction, although I
might reasonably decide against this division
into three. Intellectual attraction — very com-
mon nowadays, and responsible for at least half
the marriages in middle-class society, where
marriage still remains and will remain a matter
of attraction. Physical attraction — accountable
for all the other marriages in the world (not
counting those of position, interest, and so on,
which don't concern me, as they are marriages
of no attraction) — accountable for all the others,
Gurdon, except a small number still founded on
romantic attraction. My sister Margaret is a
type of the sort of woman who makes that last
form of marriage possible. To be romantically

GALLIA. 169

attractive, a woman has got to be innately good
(I am using such words in the old-fashioned
sense, you understand) and innately beautiful ;
but beyond this, as we have hounded the old
timidity and simplicity and insipidity and such
other idities from our doors, she must be semi-
talented and semi-independent. There is a rage
for talent and independence nowadays; a girl
can't have the commonest sort of success, poor
thing, unless, forsooth, she does something inde-
pendent !"

"I agree with every word you say of your
sister."

" It's a pity she happens to be my sister, for
the sake of argument, but I refer to her merely
because she is a picture, an etching of the type
— a silver-point."

"She is indeed; but I was going to say that
I think her clever. Her music, her painting,
are ever and ever so far above the amateur
average, you must admit ?"

" Oh, I do ; but so is every other girl's, you
know."

" "Well, I don't know. Miss Janion now,
I'm sure, if she plays, it's in just the usual
way."

" Doesn't play a note, doesn't paint a stroke.
You don't appreciate Gertrude. Her talent is
to be better dressed than any one else, and she
always is, in my judgment."
H 15

170 GALLIA.

"I am becoming anxious to know more of
this shining example of the modern girl."

" Then you had better hasten forward, and if
they haven't had enough of it, you'll meet them
coming up. I'm going to the Natural History
Museum to talk to an old friend who has
written to me. "Will you dine with me to-
morrow ? A note in the morning will do. I'm
only in town till Saturday."

" Devonshire again ?"

"No, Surrey. An inn three hundred years
old ; everything three hundred years old except
the cat and the bitter ale."

"Well, I envy you." Mark gathered up his
reins.

" You don't now, but if you were seedy, you
would yearn for a week in my village."

CHAPTER XVIII.

" Oh dear, I believe I want my tea !" ex-
claimed Miss Janion, with the same manner,
and certainly in the same key, that a green
paroquet would have made a similar remark.
The three oddly assorted companions had chosen
three isolated chairs, which had the merit of
being somewhat private, and yet commanding a
fair view of the drive. " There's nothing I look
forward to with the same yearning anticipation
as tea. I begin about three o'clock ; I tell my-
self how delicious tea is going to be ; at four, I
console myself by thinking that I can ring for
it a little early, and that will be a quarter to five.
I don't think there is anything that excites me
more than the thought of tea; and how beastly
it always is when it comes !"

" And men think we get so much out of it !"
Gallia said drily, having greatly appreciated
Miss Janion's extravagant little speech.

" It's men who, by chaffing women about tea-
drinking, have got up the idea of tea being such
a godsend. There's a conspiracy among men
to make women stick to tea and think they like
it. Hear men sighing, ' Ah, I wish I dare,'

171

172 GALLIA.

when they steadily refuse it day after day.
Catch them taking any !"

" I'm always trying new teas, and new ways
of making tea," put in Margaret. " I think I
sometimes enjoy it when it's very weak and has
a great deal of cream and sugar in it."

" Depend upon it, you only think so," laughed
Gallia.

" It's a woman's bitterest disappointment, — tea
and men," Gertrude wound up sagely.

" I'm not a bit disappointed in men — on the
whole," Margaret declared.

"Nor am I," from Gallia; "I think men are
quite good enough."

"Good? You don't mean to say you think
men good?"

" I don't think I mean that sort of good," with
a smile to Gertrude. "But they are good-
looking enough, and strong enough, and healthy
enough. They compare favourably with women
in these respects."

Margaret had her eye fastened on Gallia's
face.

" One has two views of men, I think : one of
men in relation to the world, — the world of war
and letters and statesmanship and trade, and so
on, — and one has to admire them there; the
other, of men in relation to oneself, and there it
seems to me most important that they should be
well-grown and healthy and sound — in wind,

GALLIA. 173

limb, and temper." She ended up with a little
laugh. Margaret was conscious of not under-
standing her, but Gertrude, being a person of
absolutely no insight, replied glibly —

" I like men to be amusing and jolly, and of
course as good-looking as possible. I don't think
I mind much if they are what Miss Hamesthwaite
calls sound."

" But you would if you were going to marry
them."

" I don't know. But, any way, one can't marry
them all."

"But there are other women" —

" They've got to look out for themselves. And
now that so many have taken up nursing, it can't
be quite the slavery it used to be to have an in-
valid husband." Miss Janion was quite unaware
of being on the wrong track. " I do think life, —
I mean domestic life, — is beautifully easy now ;
one needn't do a thing oneself, one can get some-
one in ! At home we are always getting people
in. Papa has his masseur every day; mamma
has her nursemaid — I mean maid-nurse ; Alfred
has his electric shock person and galvaniser — he
can't raise a slipper before eleven, when this per-
son comes, and afterwards he's awfully larky until
it wears off. Ella Lane, who lives next door,
shares my hair man, who comes in. "We get in
the butler ; we get in a woman — I think she's a
lady — to do the flowers for parties. One needn't
15*

174 GALLIA.

really have any trouble nowadays, or do anything;
one can always get someone in."

" It's the tendency to-day. In the next century
we shall have organised things more perfectly,
and shall be able to get even more people in, in
other capacities."

" Well, hasn't there been a fuss lately about
getting all the cooking in ?" asked Margaret.
" I'm sure a central depdt for that would be a
great blessing."

" It would indeed. We may live to see that,
but we shan't live to see the real advance ; which
will be the getting in of fathers and mothers, or
rather husbands and wives to be fathers and
mothers."

Gertrude shrieked; Margaret was silent and
startled.

" I was speaking quite seriously, and if you
think, you will see that such a scheme would be
eminently rational. The outcome of the present
health movement must lead that way. People
will see the folly of curing all sorts of ailments
that should not have been created, and then they
will start at the right end, they will make better
people. How can we wonder that only one per-
son in ten is handsome and well-made, when
you reflect that they were most likely haps of
hazards, that they were unintended, the offspring
of people quite unfitted to have children at
all. There are people fitted, for instance, to be

GALLIA. 175

mothers, which every woman isn't; there are
women fitted to bring up children, who may not
be mothers. Think of this : a man may love a
woman and marry her ; they may be devoted
to each other, and long for a child to bring up
and to love; but the woman maybe too deli-
cate to run the risk. What are they to do?
What would be the reasonable thing to do?
Sacrifice the poor woman for the sake of a
weakly baby ? !N"o, of course not, but get in a
mother !"

A moment's silence fell upon the three. Their
brains were a little burdened, and no wonder, by
this astounding piece of social reform.

" But why not adopt a child?" ventured Mar-
garet at length.

" But it wouldn't belong to" either of them, and
they couldn't tell in what odious surroundings it
had been born. Surely much more reasonable
to get in a mother."

A light dawned upon Miss Janion, and she
began, " But this strange woman" —

" She wouldn't be a strange woman ; she would
be a splendid, beautiful, healthy, accredited
woman, and probably physically very attractive.
The man's sentiment, if he had any, would be
greatly in her favour; men have wonderfully
little sentiment, as their whole way of life shows,
in a matter of that kind. He would have been
able to indulge his very highest feeling in the

176 GALLIA.

choice of his wife. It would make enormously
in favour of morality."

" Do you think it would ?" said Margaret.

" Surely ; by making in favour of health, by
making in favour of justice, by lifting a burden
from the shoulders of the weak and placing it on
the shoulders of the strong."

"And the — the poor journeyman mother —
would she like giving up her child ?" the gentle
Margaret asked again.

" It wouldn't be her child only, it would be his
child, by agreement" —

" Now, I wonder, if one was married, whether
one would like another woman supplying the
baby element in the family ?"

" If one were not strong enough to supply it
oneself, Miss Janion, surely ? And don't you
see that if this plan were adopted, there would
be far fewer delicate men and women in the
world ? The plan would be worked from both
sides equally, and the strong, finely-bred children
growing up happily, well distributed over the
homes of the country, instead of there being
eight in one and none in another, as is the case
just now, these children would have a much
better chance. People are not above ' getting
in' a wet-nurse nowadays, and in the most
casual fashion ; it seems to me this is only a step
farther."

Again a silence, — on Margaret's part a sunset-

GALLIA. 177

coloured silence ; on Gertrude's a silence pointed
by twitching lips and eyebrows ; on Gallia's, tbe
silence of a shrewd and hopeful saint.

" It sounds like treating the world as a sort of
farm, and men and women merely as animals,"
said Margaret, with some distress.

" Precisely my idea," said Miss Hamesthwaite
calmly. "At present half the world is not as
well treated as the best class of animals, and
there isn't a political economist living who
wouldn't say that if the increase of the lower
classes could be taken out of their own hands
and supervised on scientific lines, crime as well
as a number of diseases would be stamped out.
If it could only be done — if it could only be
done!" Gallia's clear, earnest face, with the
thin, dark line deep between her eyebrows,
looked straight in front of her, and that was
how Gurdon saw her, and again thought her
magnificent, as he rode by, about thirty paces
away.

"And what would you do with people like
that in your world?" said Miss Janion, point-
ing to the brilliant barouche, which was turn-
ing opposite them in order to take its beautiful
occupant to the corner in time to see the
Duchess.

" Who is it ?" inquired Gallia innocently.

Miss Janion informed her with some cere-
mony. " I really know her well by sight," she

178 GALLIA.

added, "because we both get our hair at the
same shop — there is really no one like Hugo for
hair-pin fringes."

" I have no quarrel with her," Gallia replied,
with a certain bitter quiet.

" Vile creature !" sputtered the Janion girl.

Gallia looked shocked, and rose from her seat.

" I hope you don't mean that," she said ; " you
have the greatest possible reason to be grateful
to her whole class and to pity them. I must go
home now, I think." She had looked at the sky
and the trees' shadows, and then compared their
time with her small black-enamelled watch.

" You should write about your ideas," said
Margaret, smiling up at her from under the
black-eaved hat.

Gallia shook her head briskly.

" One would only be grouped with all the
other women who are said to be leading the
' Sexual Revolt,' and that would do the ideas
harm, for no one would take them seriously."

" But so much attention is paid to what women
write now."

Gallia smiled drily, and swept her eyes over
the park before bringing them to Margaret's
face; then, taking her hand at the same mo-
ment, she said —

" That's just it ! "What they say makes so
much noise that nobody hears properly what it
is. A woman who really feels these things

GALLIA. 179

shouldn't write about them now, until what they
call the boom of women is over."

" But couldn't she write under a man's name ?"

" Men don't think these things, you see."

"No men?"

" I don't think any man."

"But how is that?"

"Because" — Gallia smiled a little, and then
her face grew wistful as she returned her an-
swer, unspoken, to her own mind. " Good-bye,
Margaret. Don't dislike me on account of this
crusade against the copy-book. Good-bye, Miss
Janion."

"It's been an awfully jolly afternoon," re-
marked that sprightly young woman, as she and
Margaret Btood to watch the quiet figure in black
go up the path. " She is amusing," she added
heartily.

" She doesn't mean to be."

" People so seldom mean to be, and so often
are."

"But she's perfectly serious in all she says,
and even more serious in the things she thinks
and doesn't say."

" Keally, now ? Do you think she can have
been jilted or had a disappointment ? It sounds
like it, doesn't it ?"

CHAPTER XIX.

Gallia's life, at this time, was a very lonely-
one, and that, she would say to anyone who com-
miserated her, was its very best feature. She
liked to be alone, at least she thought, like many
other young people of her temper, that she liked
it ; but she was happier and better in every way
when she was not alone, and her father, a man of
small insight in domestic matters, but occasion-
ally right in his judgments for all that, decided
that she should not moon about the country
home in Surrey for six weeks all by herself, but
should persuade " one of her young friends"
(Lord Hamesthwaite was perfectly unaware that
she had none — he believed that every girl had a
number of young friends) to go down and spend
the time with her.

" Very well," Gallia had said, and she deter-
mined to see if Mrs. Essex and Margaret would
come.

" Quietly, of course," Lord Hamesthwaite had
added, with a sigh. " No party. Quite quietly.
And I have asked Shillinglee and Oswald — I
think you have met Oswald ? "We are going to
have a week's work upon the Bill. Later on
Denyer will join me."

" Has Mr. Denyer left Africa, then ?"
180

GALLIA. 181

"My dear child, you surely remember the
whole business of Denyer's leaving the Cape not
six weeks ago ? He is in the Auvergne at present
for his health, but by the end of July he will be
in England."

Gallia nodded; she took no interest in the
South African business and Mr. Denyer, but it
was impossible to take up a paper without
coming upon a mention of her father's name and
the name of Denyer in connection with the great
question.

These few words were spoken at the beginning
of the hot fortnight in June. There always is a
hot fortnight every June in London, and it was
just beginning about the time that Lord Hames-
thwaite made known his summer plans to his
daughter.

"What a quiet summer it was going to be !
how different from the summers Gallia had
always run away from in her mother's lifetime,
when a large political party was gathered in the
breakfast-rooms every morning, and important
talks — talks which were going to colour the Par-
liamentary business of the day — went forward
among the old-fashioned flower-beds ; then the
quiet that fell when a midday train had borne
all the political tools and implements to the big
London workshops. On Wednesday nights, the
immense dinner-parties at which Gallia had
sometimes been present; parties at which un-
16

182 GALLIA.

expected political constellations scintillated, and
the working-man member sat down with the
nursing peer, and a satirical writer, some Tory-
leopard, lay down with the Radical kid.

It all seemed very far away now, and now
that it seemed so far away, Gallia wondered if
she would not have done better to be in the
midst of it. She could be brilliant in society if
the mood was upon her ; but in those days she
had been so serious, because so young, that the
men who held the country's destiny in their hand
had appeared too frivolous for her.

" They never seemed to be interested in real
things," Gallia explained to her aunt when she
dropped in upon her to detail her father's plans,
and they got talking about past times together.
" All they said and all they thought seemed so
far away from real things as they really are. It
seems to me, that if you live the perfectly en-
gineered life of public men, — put down by a
brougham in time to be picked up by a Pull-
man, turned out of a Pullman into a waggonette
or a dog-cart; just time to dress for dinner; just
time to sleep before being called and dressed
and breakfasted ; just time for a few words, quite
lightly and unseriously spoken, and usually
taking the form of a chaffing comment upon an
opponent, or a good story of a mistake in one
of the Offices, or an amusing misunderstanding
at one of the Embassies ; then the waggonette

GALLIA. 183

and Pullman and brougham again, and the
House for a few hours, — what leisure have they
to look at real things as they really are ? In the
train men look at the afternoon papers — or they
read one of a mass of pamphlets from inside an
elastic band. I don't see, — unless they remem-
ber things they saw when they were boys and
loitered about and birds-nested, — I don't see
how they are to know about any of the things
that really are."

" To hear these wild sentiments from your
father's daughter !" cried the vivacious old lady
in reply. " Why, child, there is no particular
occasion to know about things as they really are.
Men in your father's position have no time for
that, and it wouldn't advantage them the least
bit if they had. They know most accurately, I
am sure, about things as they are reported to be.
They read and get up reports ; and when you
would have them looking out for railway car-
riage windows across flying fields" —

" "Well, they might see something."

" What in the world could they see ? A few
labourers going home, perhaps."

" Or a few wood-pigeons," interjected Gallia
softly. Then, "But surely laws are made to
make things better than they are," she went on,
" and if they don't ever" —

" My dear child, you are really too old to talk
like that — in your position too !"

184 GALLIA.

" Dear Aunt Celia, you must forgive me. You
know I am very, very backward in all such things,
having never paid them the least attention;
but I think I'm going to be more interested in
papa's work now."

"I hope you will sympathise with it, dear,"
said Mrs. Leighton gravely. "It might be as
well not to go so far as to be interested in it;
— that is a term that seems to represent so
unpleasant an attitude nowadays ; — but to sym-
pathise with it would be very graceful, dear, very
graceful indeed, and very gratifying to your
father, I am sure."

Gallia smiled in her wistful manner, and passed
to another subject.

" When will you come down to the Hall, Aunt
Celia?"

" You really want to have me, dear ? So good
of you both ! Well, I shall be a month at Aix,
and — shall we say the early part of August ?"

" Any time that suits you will do perfectly, of
course. Papa mentioned this morning that Lord
Shillinglee was coming down for a week —
perhaps Mr. Oswald too, on political business."

" Have you ever thought, my dear Gallia, of
marrying Lord Shillinglee ?"

" Certainly I have not."

"Ah! because in some ways it might suit
very well."

Gallia laughed. " I don't know whom it

GALLIA. 185

would suit in any way," she said, and added
quickly, in order to change the subject, for on
marriage Aunt Celia was dangerous, " And Mr.
Denyer is expected."

"At the Hall? You don't say so. It is
always so difficult to get any information about
public business. I never think of asking your
father, unless I am prepared to pretend that I
know already, and Mr. Gurdon persists in saying
that he knows no more than the pigeons in the
courtyard. But Denyer has certainly played a
great part recently, and I want very much to
see the man himself."

Mrs. Leighton was referring to what was at
that time " the South African question ;" it does
not in the least matter which South African
question. The Government had, as usual, quite
scandalised one-half of the public either by its
action or inaction in the matter. Lord Hames-
thwaite had been severely criticised, publicly and
privately ; then something had been taken back
and something else explained away, and a great
deal more ignored, and the whole matter was
forgotten save by the people who were leisurely
engaged in compiling a Blue Book to be published
in a few years' time ; a Blue Book which might
be used in Board Schools as a model of the
complete letter-writer.

"But I often feel," went on Mrs. Leighton,
" that Mark Gurdon — who has been in Africa

16*

186 GALLIA.

and has his eyes so wide open — could tell me a
great deal, but he will only dilate upon the
' Karroo.' " The door opened at this moment,
and Gurdon himself almost anticipated the an-
nouncement of his name.

" So magnetically sympathetic of you to come
in just now! your name was upon my lips," said
Mrs. Leighton, as they shook hands. " Let me
present you to my niece, Miss Hamesthwaite.
Dear Gallia, Mr. Mark Gurdon, to whom I have
become quite attached!" This was made very
playful and complimentary, and something in
the old lady's manner put Mark at his very best.
The old lady's easy and genial artificiality acted
like a sun upon persons who possessed the social
art ; they behaved delightfully in her rooms, and
went away happy because successful. As for
herself, it was her habit to remark that she was
entirely satisfied with the manners of the present
day, about which she heard so much complaint.
There was all the courtesy that one could wish,
if one merely gave it an opportunity to come
out.

Gallia watched Mark carefully as he spoke to
her aunt. She seemed to have heard of him
often, considering that he was an unimportant
person as yet; his name had appeared on the
lists her mother had sometimes sent her of guests
at a reception; his name was on her visiting
list, and she would have to ask him to parties

GALLIA. 187

herself in the.future. She listened, and admired
his speaking voice, it was so much lower and
rounder than the usual modern man's. " I mis-
trust falsetto voices ; they mean weakness, when
they don't mean worse," she had said to herself
in the days when she had been accustomed to
sum up everything with great promptitude ; the
days before she was three-and-twenty.

His voice was not the only good thing about
Mark to strike a girl's fancy ; there was a firm-
ness and a faint pinkness about his face which
did not suggest a London life in any way, and
yet would have been too delicate for a country-
man. His eyes were bright and clear — those
curious ringed eyes of grey and hazel ; his teeth
were perfect; not too small, and very white.
Gallia saw all these things rather as a dealer
might notice the points in a horse than as a
lady might perceive a young man's claims to
handsomeness.

" And you are so good as to think my mo-
ment has come," he was saying, smilingly, to
Mrs. Leighton, and Gallia watched thoughtfully
all the time.

" Your moment for what ?" she suddenly in-
quired, and her uncompromising eyes fixed
themselves upon him when he turned to her.

" My moment to emerge from the covert of
mediocrity into the open of — what shall we
say?"

188 GALLIA.

" Predestination," said Mrs. Leighton, with a
touch of solemnity under her smile.

" You are going in for public life ?" said
Gallia, taking a quite impersonal interest in the
subject.

" It is the only thing for me to attempt. When
a man has no position — no private position of
any kind, I mean — and no duties, except to-
wards himself, he had better be trying to suc-
ceed, don't you think, in something? It em-
ploys his leisure," Mark replied genially.

" Oh, if he has no interest in outside things —
in agriculture, or literature, or art — I suppose he
may as well" —

" Be his own field, and book, and marble, Miss
Hamesthwaite ? I think he may. And it has
the merit of being exceedingly difficult," he went
on, with his well-calculated indifference, and a
smile that had the curves of satire. " To some
men, success and advancement are, as Mrs. Leigh-
ton has said, predestined. But my education
was not of the right kind ; it was scattered and
varied."

" It has made you a man of the world," Mrs.
Leighton put in briskly.

" But not of the world of public service," said
Mark, with a shake of his head. " I ought to have
been at Eaton ; whereas I wasted three or four
years at a great public school, learned nothing,
and had to do without the kudos as well. At

GALLIA. 189

Eton a man gets known by his Christian name,
if he gets nothing else, — or, better still, by a
diminutive of his Christian name, — and it is all
that he requires. You will not believe, Miss
Hamesthwaite," with a dry, whimsical smile upon
his face, " what a difference it makes to a man's
career. To have been 'Eddy' — better still, to
have been 'Bobsy' at Eton, is a guarantee of
place and progress ! But," with a glance of
deprecation, "your sympathy encourages one too
much. It is a long subject, and I must pray
forgiveness for talking so much about myself."
He looked at Mrs. Leighton, but turned a glance
finally on Gallia. He was not sure if she were
despising him for his determination to make
something of himself, but he was patient, and he
felt that she would not despise him when she
knew him better. Mark had discovered that
there is no kind of woman who will not admire
personal ambition in a man — irrespective of the
object of that ambition. Women, Mark knew,
will respect a clever murderer if he shows suffi-
cient dexterity. Her next remark, therefore, sur-
prised him, simply spoken though it was.

" The desire to ' get on,' as it is called, is some-
thing I have never been able to comprehend,"
she said. Then she turned to her aunt : "I have
forgotten to say till now that papa is coming to
dinner to-night, if you are not engaged."

" That is very charming of him. I quite won-

190 GALLIA.

dered when we were to meet again, as I go to
Aix on Thursday. Are you coming too, dear ?
Do. I will make Mr. Gurdon stay to entertain
you, and we can all go on to Holland House
together. Yes ?"

" Thank you, Aunt Celia, but I hadn't intended
going to Holland House." Gurdon had mur-
mured that he would be delighted.

" My dear child, we must have you go about a
very little. It is time now that you appeared in
some places. You can be quiet without being
immured."

Gallia apparently gave in.

" Then I will go and tell papa : he is at the
House of Lords — I may just catch him."

Gurdon thought the little movement of au
revoir that she made, and her slow step to the
door he was holding, very beautiful in their way.
He was quite satisfied to have met her at last.
She was driven to Westminster, and sent in a
tiny note with the evening plans in it ; then with
an idle whim she alighted at Dean's Yard and
sent her carriage to wait beside her father's.

She liked this old, strange part of London, so
unlike London as it is ; she liked to wander in the
precincts of the Abbey, and look up at the dull
red-brick houses, which seemed so comfortable,
which seemed to mean something quite apart
from all the other buildings in all the great City.
It was long since she had strolled into the cloisters,

GALLIA. 191

and it would be eool there this hot June day. She
took her way past the constable, to that passage,
flagged and grey, where mysterious dull-red doors
have the air of closing the burrows of canons and
other cobwebby and unreal dignitaries. She
turned aside into the little court that opens on the
left. Did big London know that such a place was
in existence ? Surely not, or it would tear brick
from brick, cast the heavy time-eaten, wrought
ironwork of lamp and sconce and knocker into
its metropolitan dust-heap.

She went on, past more red doors, down the
long passage to the small, square, grass-centred
Court ; the air, that had smelt of stone and bone,
and lime and time, grew fresher here ; the pat-
terns of the tracery in the arches were touched
in places by the sun ; it was light again — for the
open air came there. Gallia, who had not a tear
for human ill or sorrow, turned back into the
dim flagged passage wjth her handkerchief to
her eyes ; she had suddenly grown conscious, as
human beings do at times, of the disposition to
peace, beauty, dignity, and spiritual loveliness,
about some places, — and it marks the contrast
to man and his fret and unrest. Some such dim
sense of discord and disparity with a beautiful
world had touched Gallia — she stopped, where a
shaft of sunlight from the little Court invaded
the courtyard for a few feet.

" Quite a Royal Academy success," said a voice

192 GALLIA.

behind her, and she looked up, startled, to per-
ceive Mr. Essex.

" How are you ? You'd be a boon to Bome
struggling fellow who couldn't get in ; you'd be
the picture of the year."

CHAPTER XX.

In the moment of shaking hands, Gallia dis-
covered a strange thing ; her feelings for Essex
had undergone some change. She looked quietly
into his face, with some idea, perhaps, of seeing
whether his glance had any effect upon her ; it
had an effect, but the effect was different. The
thing amounted to this : she had grown, her mind
had grown, and she had arranged a scheme of
life for herself, had arranged a series of ideas, in
none of which Essex could have the least part.
Essex, the Essex she had loved, could not touch
her now in the same way ; the part of her that
he had touched and had hurt was atrophied.
So much the better or so much the worse for
Gallia.

" I had forgotten about you," she said, in faint
surprise at herself.

" Really ? But why not ?" he asked lightly ;
" though I had not quite forgotten you."

She did not take up this cue.

" What are you doing now ?" she inquired.

" Just now I am looking at your hat ; a
moment since I was wondering how you came
here. You can't have been calling on an old
college friend ?"

i n 17 193

194 GALLIA.

" For one thing, I have no old college friend
to call on. If you know men who live here, can
you tell me if this environment affects them in
any way ? I should change my whole mind if
I lived here."

Essex looked at her whimsically.

" Am I to understand that, not having lived
here, you have not changed your mind, and
that"—

She interrupted him, again with the same
half curious, half surprised, but very quiet ex-
pression.

" You need not go so far out of your way to
understand or misunderstand me. Come here
and sit down for a moment — I want to see how
you make me feel."

" I can give you a quarter of an hour," he
answered, after a glance at his watch.

" I sha'n't rob you of all that. "Where were
you last December ?"

" December ? — I was in Oxford."

" I was in Algiers with my mother, and she
died at the end of the month. That was when
I last thought of you seriously. Then — how
odd it seems ! — I would have liked so much to
see you."

" "Why didn't you telegraph ?"

" You needn't say that sort of thing ! I am
quite aware that I seem a very strange style of
person to you, but, you see, to you I say ex-

GALLIA. 195

actly what I mean; when one has once been
frank at a very big moment, it seems foolish to
be terrified of the effect of little bits of frank-
ness in quite small moments. So I asked you
where you were because I wondered if I came
into your mind at all when I was wanting to see
you so much."

" So far as I can recollect, not less or more
than usual."

Gallia laughed — an unamused, unmerry sort
of laugh it was.

" And is the world beginning to grow accus-
tomed to the measure of honesty you decided
to mete out to it ?" Essex asked pleasantly.

" I have, just at present, very little to do with
the world. One has not to mind being thought
peculiar by a number of people ; it doesn't break
the skin, that I know of."

" If adverse opinion took the form of what I
believe is called ' chaps,' how raw we should all
be," remarked Essex. "And I suppose," he
went on, with an inquiring air, " it is absolutely
impossible to a woman of your nature to let
things slide, and be happy, and look pretty, and
marry, and love, and bring up children, and work
out an amiable, not too complicated or fatiguing
sort of destiny ?"

" I certainly hope to bring up a child. I think
it is all I do want," Gallia answered.

" But the other things you cannot give way to ?"

196 GALLIA.

" I am as happy as anyone when I see cause.
A sail, a good gallop, a day's shooting, will often
— in fact, will always make me happy; that's
because I'm young and strong and my blood
moves. I do not comprehend the emotional
kind of happiness to be got out of some man's
admiration of me — or whatever it is that gives
it to women. Love did not seem to me a happy
thing. It attacked my pride, my independence,
the whole fabric of my character; it lowered
my crest — I think you might have seen ?" She
turned to smile at him.

" You still think that you loved me ?" Essex
asked, almost quite naturally.

" We needn't go into it again ; but whatever
my feelings may be, and however ill-regulated
and untimely, I don't mistake them. I told you
that I loved you, and you know why I told you.
I wish it had not been necessary, God knows,
but you made it necessary."

He turned fully towards her, leaning his back
into the corner of the stone seat and holding his
knee with both hands.

" Gallia, I am terribly sorry for you. Don't
mistake me ; it is nothing to do with your having
loved or not having loved me. It is simply be-
cause you are the perfectly hapless kind of mod-
ern woman. Your whole make-up is an egre-
gious mistake — a complete waste of material.
There is no place in all the world for you.

GALLIA. 197

You are not wanted because you are for no
use."

" The earwig of humanity," she interjected,
with a wistful kind of smile.

" You have a beautiful face," continued Essex,
speaking with unusual entrain. " Good heavens,
child, what eyes you have ! And what use are
those eyes to you? They are shaped to look
things of which you have no knowledge. Your
lips, — one could imagine, if one saw a picture of
you, the most emotional moments in the world
made by your lips. And you use them — good
Lord ! — you use them to talk the flimsiest philos-
ophy— the sociology of a schoolgirl's half-holi-
day!"

Gallia's face was quite grave, was sometimes
sad, but a light was growing at the back of her
eyes, the light she had gleaned since she saw
Essex last.

" Physically you are so lovely," he went on in
a more argumentative key, " that one regrets
you have no grain of coquetry to make play
with all these bodily gifts, even if it were cruel
play. I think — do you know this? — I think
that when I made some sort of love to you at
Mrs. Leighton's, I was only misled by your
appearance into thinking you the sort of woman
that you looked. You are not heartless in the
way of being cold and indifferent, — that has
gone out with women now, — you are simply
17*

198 GALLIA.

incapable of an ordinary feminine feeling."
Essex had no idea that this was said with a
strong note of irritation, of resentment. " As
I look at you now, you are the sort of being an
amorous-minded man, which you know I am
not, would sell his whole career to kiss. It is
your outward form that looks so; it does not
suit your mind ; it will give you trouble yet, for
men will fall in love with it. That will not be
your fault, but the bitterness will be all yours.
For you are a misshapen woman."

Gallia heard all this with very little surprise,
it was not so new to her ; and though she felt
the touch of scorn in Essex's voice, she knew
the scorn was not his, but was his outraged sex
speaking in him. "When he applied his last
epithet to her, she never winced.

"But there is something more than love in
the world, is there not?" Her voice was a
whisper, an anxious whisper.

" For women ? Nothing ! What else should
there be?"

" There is motherhood." This time her voice
was calm, only her eyes looked wistfully before
her.

Essex looked a little more curiously at her.

" A mad anomaly !" he exclaimed.

" One should be beautifully made and beauti-
ful to be a mother," she said again, still staring
Wistfully before her. " Perhaps" — she seemed

GALLIA. 199

to recollect him and turned towards him with a
half-hearted smile and her eyes magnified by
the tears in them — " perhaps there is a bigger
object in my appearance than the satisfaction
of any man's senses."

" Good heavens, what a coil ! Then you have
some sort of feelings?" He was genuinely
surprised.

" Listen," Gallia said. " At any rate one can
talk to you and — you — don't gasp. Listen.
The first sort of love, the amorous love, is over
and done in me. I hadn't a seam or a big vein
of it. I think I had only a ' pocket' — and it's
worked out ; wouldn't pay to sink another shaft
for that. The capacity for mother-love, I think,
is very large in me ; I think I should make a
good mother : I can't tell you how I know, but
I have been finding it out ever since my own
mother died, and I began to know it when I sat
beside her dead body. I could spend myself
and lose myself in my child, if I had one, and
ask for no return ; for everything else I come
first ; but I shouldn't come first there. When I
marry, I shall, of course, marry without love.
For that is used up. It is my misfortune, and
has come out of the crookedness of things, that
I didn't love the right person at the right time."

Essex was looking at her with more of himself
in his eyes than anyone had ever seen there
before. When her voice dropped, an impulse

200 GALLIA.

taught him to take her hand. He took it, but
she did not appear to notice him or his action.
She was just talking out her soul to the grey
stones, softened oddly by their influence, and
also because she was beside the only human
being who understood her.

" But that has nothing to do with the rest. On
the whole, it may be an advantage. If I were to
fall in love again, it might be with someone quite
unsuitable to be the father of my child — someone
who would not be fine and strong and healthy,
and of a healthy stock. As it is, when I marry,
— I talk of it quite as a certainty because it is a
certainty to me, being rich and good-looking,
and the only child of my father, — I shall marry
solely with a view to the child I am going to
live for." She turned towards him again in a
rising tumult of feeling, and clasped the hand
he had given her in both hers. They were
trembling a little, he noticed, but though he
felt some strong emotion himself, he concealed
it bravely, for he knew it had nothing in
common with the emotion she felt. " So don't
you think — don't you think that there may be
a place in the world for me after all ?"

At the moment she had told her love for him,
she had left him cold and normal ; now describ-
ing a greater and more spiritual feeling, she lit
strange fires. Two passers-by went down the
cloister passage at this moment, men hurrying

GALLIA. 201

along ; oddly enough, they did not observe the
pair sitting on the seat, hand held in hand. It
gave Essex a moment to control himself, to fold
his lip and batten down some flame that would
have been half articulate only. Then he kissed
both her hands with a quietness that came
natural to him at this moment of passionate
feeling, he even laid them for a moment upon
his breast, then, still holding them, looked into
her eyes.

" I am not making love to you now, Beautiful,
Beautiful . . ." he said, very, very low; then,
having told this momentous lie for her sake, he
kissed the hands once more and put them down.

" I know you are not," she said simply. " You
have heard, and you know, — for you said it your-
self,— I am not the sort of woman to be made
love to." Essex's lips twitched uneasily once or
twice in something that was not unlike a smile.
" But I need not be cut down like the green fig-
tree on that account, for I may be of some use
after all; there must always be room in the
world for a good mother of children, and I will
teach them none of the unhappy things I know
when I bring them up."

" Gallia," Essex began hesitatingly, and moving
a little closer to her, " have you thought — with
that odd clear head of yours — about the thing
you propose ?"

" Motherhood ? Often and often. I am very

202 GALLIA.

strong, and I have never known what it is
to be frightened at anything. I am not fright-
ened."

" Not motherhood," he said, still speaking low
and with his dark eyes curiously intent upon her
face. " Marriage without love."

Gallia was silent a moment ; then she nodded
her head. " The same answer as before," she
said.

"Because there would be years of it; and
marriage is not" — Essex would have roared with
laughter at this stupendous phrase if he had
heard it in cold blood — " is not all motherhood."
But the strength of the whole moment was that
Essex's cold blood was hot.

" Other women bear the same sort of thing."

" They have married for money or position,
and they have reckoned on the price all along."

" Ah, but other women, who have very little
money and no position ; who have often a diffi-
culty to get a living ; women who are not mar-
ried. My position will be just this much better
than theirs, that I shall be a mother." The
triumph in her voice was somehow pitiful.

He shivered a little.

" They are not bred as you are, they haven't
your feelings."

" Why not ? Some of them must be well
bred, and just now you said I hadn't any
feelings !"

GALLIA. 203

" I never said you had no feelings of delicacy
or refinement," Essex replied, with quick se-
verity.

" It does not seem to me," she spoke cynically
and coldly, "judging merely by pathological
facts such as come under everyone's notice, that
marriage can have much to do with delicacy and
refinement."

He shook his head.

"My dear, you are becoming the modern
woman again, and a moment since you were
primary — and exquisite."

" "Well, we'll put that aside. Of course," low-
ering her tone and making it hard and crisp,
" I quite know it, if I were differently made, I
might dread it ; but I look at it like the women
who marry for position and money — as a price.
It is a pity, as I heard a girl say the other day,
that it is not an affair of ' money down' — that
one cannot write a big cheque, and be done.
But these things are the inherent disadvantages
that cannot be done away with. And it leaves
me very clear in mind. To be marrying for love
might bring about one's object less satisfactorily.
If I were living fifty years hence, I should not
probably have to marry at all. But our yoke is
the ignorance of our day. Dark, I have talked
enough. I am going now." She stood up. He
remained seated, thinking. It was a beautiful
deep twilight in the cloister now.

204 GALLIA.

" How is it you have talked so inwardly to
me ?" he asked, with a shadow in his eyes.

"Because with you I have no mauvaise honte.
How should I have ? Did I not take the very
widest step that afternoon in my room last year ?"
She seemed quite free and simple with him, but
there was a warm colour in her cheek and a light
in her eyes. If his life had depended on it,
Essex could not have prevented the words that
rose in him, or stemmed the flood that brought
them.

" Was it true then — what you said ?" he asked,
in a low voice that he kept even with difficulty.

" Quite true then."

" Then." He repeated the word gravely. His
head was bent, his face hidden. He stood up
beside her. " And now I cannot bear to think
of how cruel I was to you. How brutal !" He
put his arms round her shoulders. " May I kiss
you and be forgiven ? The man you loved, who
is to be the only man you love, may kiss you
now ? It is quiet here, but all the world might
be present for me." His voice rocked unevenly
for a moment, but he steadied himself, and Gal-
lia's eyes fed on his excitement. " How cold
you found me ! "We suffer for the degeneracy
of our day. But I have enough passion" — his
voice broke in a note like laughter — "to kiss
you once." He threw back his head when his
lips left hers. "Love, love! My love — love,"

GALLIA. 205

he said, and the word, which feeling made sing
in the air, had that in it which seemed to cradle
Gallia's heart; she leaned and rested on these
tones, tasting something of the peace of sleep.
Then his head bent forward, and she felt its
weight upon her own, the curve of his cheek
was against her forehead. Quick to learn and
to respond, this new moment was teaching her
fast, but he raised his head and said, " You will
know that for half an hour you were worshipped,
for a minute you were kissed . . . and . . ."

She looked up at him with the only look of
its kind her face ever wore, then she turned and
walked away towards the gate.

In the odd harmony that had come to be
between them, Gallia was conscious of some
strange chord that sounded curiously. That
Essex was sincere, for the first time in his life
perhaps, she felt, and that was enough.

She could not know the inside of this man's
mind, nor tell that the odd chord was Essex's
own amazement at himself. The man was find-
ing another self. For years he had sown and
reaped in the home pastures of his soul, but,
straying vaguely to an unsought hill-top, had
unwittingly climbed the ridge and set foot in an
undiscovered country.

18

CHAPTER XXL

Essex, leaving the cloister, now dimly lamp-
lit, some hour or so after Gallia flitted away,
came across a friend and dined with him at the
House of Commons, and was during dinner, as
the friend was fain to remark, even more himself
than usual. Then, having walked up and down
the terrace till half-past ten, he said good-night,
and took his way on foot to Hammersmith. Some
men believe greatly in the calming effects of long
walks, though what calm does a tiger find, who
pads almost ceaselessly the length of his cage ?
During the dinner and the after-talk, Essex had
not once thought of Gallia ; no sooner, however,
was he striding through the network of Bel-
gravian streets, than his mind seemed to pick up
the turmoil of his thoughts just where he had
dropped them when Shale clapped him on the
shoulder.

What proved — had not everything in his whole
character proved previously — that Essex was a
man of the least possible emotional experience,
was the fact that he was surprised when his
memory failed to give back a detailed and pho-
nographed replica of his and Gallia's conversa-
tion. He remembered a number of isolated sen-

206

GALLIA. 207

tences that had fallen from her lips, but what,
he wondered, had been his answers to them?
"Were such subjects as these ever contemplated
by the religious-minded, his aberrations might
be alluded to as a merciful dispensation. No
truthfully recorded conversation of the highly
emotional kind could fail to sound ridiculous,
were one to observe it with a frigid or even with
a tepid mind. Slightly warmed and relaxed the
mind must be to judge such matter. (It is
fortunate that the people whose opinions matter,
have only time to read novels in the evening, or
late at night.) The finest love-scenes ever written
are those that can be read at eleven a.m., without
sounding sickly or silly.

To a cynic such as Essex, with a thinness of
skin like his in the matter of seeming absurd,
the details of that half-hour in the cloisters
would have appeared farcical indeed. But all
that remained to him was a confused memory ;
a memory startling, but puzzling, pleasurable.
That he should have acted as he had done sur-
prised Essex, but it did not disconcert him ; no,
not though it seemed so unusual and astonish-
ing; he remained fully satisfied with himself.
That some people might perceive an indelicacy
in kissing and professing to love a lady to whom
he had no idea of offering marriage, Essex was
unaware, or if he were aware, would have
waived as trivial. Besides, he knew that in

208 GALLIA.

Gallia's mind, as in the minds of many other
thoughtful people, love and marriage were re-
garded as justly separate. He knew Gallia had
understood him ; he was sure — and he was quite
right in being sure — that he had left her a sense
of satisfaction, of fulfilment. She would pro-
ceed on her way, he on his, and they would walk
to their separate destinies.

As he passed down Kensington, he saw the
long line of carriages going up to Holland
House; but he had not Mark Gurdon's ac-
quaintance with people's crests and arms and
liveries, and, having no psychic sense, he was
quite unaware that Gallia, more lovely than ever
before, was sitting beside Mrs. Leighton in one
of those carriages, and that her father and Mark
Gurdon were seated opposite to her.

Love is a very short, small, and frequently un-
important incident in the lives of most people.
It is meant to be. If the days of a man's life be
threescore years and ten, during which he gets
up and goes to bed between the performance of
stupid but necessary duties, it is only reasonable
that at the most he should offer up a sacrifice of
six months or so to love. The Honourable Gallia
Hamesthwaite, unphotographed, unparagraphed,
and ungossiped about, passed in the plenitude
of her beauty from room to room ; kinder, more
tolerant of stupidity than usual ; more gracious
and more approachable, but with a Buperbness

GALLIA. 209

about her that is only to be seen in the face and
manner of a woman who has picked her aloe-
flower.

Mark Gurdon was often beside her; Mrs.
Leighton observed and admired and approved
her, and, clever old lady as she was, never sus-
pected Mark's dawning ambition. "Whether it
woke definitely then, or whether he had felt
thrills of it before, cannot be told. But he was
annoyed to think, when he shut their carriage
door upon the ladies, that he had thought of
going to Edwards Square that night, since he was
in the neighbourhood, and had not seen Cara for
two or three days. He walked briskly to Edwards
Square, his face flushing and his eye kindling
with thought induced by the scene he had left,
not the scene he was going to. What we call
delicacy is a quality wholly unknown to Life and
Nature ; Nature has no regard for the fitness of
things, and Life arranges the most tasteless con-
trasts. For instance, it was far from agreeable
of them both to make Gallia attract Mark with
the light lit by Essex's kisses, and it was equally
outr& in them to send Mark to the arms of his
mistress with his head filled with thoughts of
another woman. But none of the persons con-
cerned were to blame for these contingencies.
Life and Nature were alone responsible, and can
only be excused on the ground that neither is
really well bred.

o 18*

210 GALLIA.

The studio was lighted when he knocked, and
a step which was not Cara's came towards the
door. It was opened by the charwoman who
had befriended Cara when her father met with
his accident and when she met with Gurdon;
the woman now came daily to do what service
she required.

" She's very bad, poor dear," said Mrs. Miles,
in a voice of deep sympathy; and Mark's
face, which a moment before had been fired
by ambition, fell hastily to lines of genuine
anxiety.

"HI? How? Since when?"

"Without waiting for an answer, he pushed
past the portibre, and came swiftly to the broad
couch on which, among a number of bright
cushions and rugs, he saw the girl's pale face.

She was awake and knew him, though her
first words showed her mind was wandering.
In an instant, Mark's cloak was off, and he was
kneeling beside her, raising up her head and
putting the wild-looking hair out of her eyes.

" Whatever she would 'a done if it hadn't of
been my day a' comin', God knows," said the
woman fervently.

" But have you done anything ? Have you
sent for a doctor? "When was she taken ill?
Did you find her so ?"

Mrs. Miles posed herself, with her arms
wrapped across the strings of her three aprons.

GALLIA. 211

" Hight o'clock is my hour a' comin', which I
'ave to git Miles's breakfuss before 'e goes hout
of a mornin'. I 'adn't got down our court be-
fore I says, 'There, I've forgot the baskit,' it
came over me all of a minute, and there, I says,
' Little miss '11 never 'eed if I'm a minit late,'
for punkchell's been my motter since hiver I
took to charin', which was wen Miles took to
drink"—

" But when you got here, my good woman,
when you got here — was she ill ?"

" "Wen I 'ad the baskit, sir," Mrs. Miles con-
tinued, with an air of one who rigidly adheres
to truth, and will not step aside for any-
thing,— ""Wen I 'ad the baskit, I came on in a
'urry, and come hup to the door, sir, same as
you might, that unthinkin'."

"And I was dancing — dancing," Cara was
saying in a low whisper and playing upon the
covering with her fingers, as though in imitation
of the figure of a dance.

" "Which she wasn't, sir, for knock and knock
I did, and then at last I 'eard a groan. Aoh !"
Mrs. Miles placed one hand below her waist
and just in front of the ample curve of her hip.
" I don' know as ever I came over the same
since I was carryin' Hemmer ; which I was took
so I couldn't kerry a bucket, not the shillin'
size, and Miles 'ad to borrer off the landlord
of the ' King o' Denmark,' which he wouldn't

212 GALLIA.

lend him more than fourpence in the shillin' on
'is score."

With a patience that did him credit, Gurdon
forbore to interrupt Mrs. Miles again; he em-
ployed himself in very gently straightening the
rugs and covers and cushions of the lounge and
making the poor soul more comfortable ; but he
was ready on the instant that Mrs. Miles should
reach the kernel of the story to leap up and fetch
a doctor.

"An' I 'eard a sound," continued the good
woman, who had detailed at least one family
reminiscence in the meantime which Mark's ear
had failed to catch, " like you was polishin' one
of them parky floors with a clawth, an', aoh my !
it was 'er a-draggin' 'erself along the wall and
floor to hopin the door."

" What did she say to "you ?" put in Mark
sharply.

" Say ? She was pas' speakin' and took 'er
up in my arms I did, and kerry her in 'ere on
the sofa. She's been talkin' a deal of furrin
talk, but wen I undress her I soon give a guess
wot was up, pore young woman — not but wot
I've 'eard these furrin natures 'as it easier, but I
did wot I could, and got 'ot water and give 'er
fermentations same as the doctor hordered me,
an' made all neat, for it's a hawkward spot with
illness" —

" Have you had a doctor ?" Mark broke in,

GALLIA. 213

feeling his brain turning with Miles's chat-
ter.

The woman looked at him rather sharply, and
her expression, as he afterwards recalled it,
puzzled him greatly.

" I didn't know wot might be your wish, sir ;
an' I done wot I could, bein' accustom' to
illness; there's beef-tea a-makin' now, and I
give 'er beef-jelly, wot I run to the chemiss for
and was obliged to take 'er purse, but you'll see
as one and ninepence was every bit I took, sir.
It's strengthening stuff she needs and careful
nursin', but then I can't leave Miles, 'e do drink
that shockin' wen I'm away, and negleek 'is
family something shameful, still I could stay
most of the time and run 'ome hivery now and
then if you was willing."

" Thank you," Mark said, gladly accepting
as kindness what was probably merely the
avid relish of illness common to her class. " But
I will have a doctor now, and if you can come
every day, I will nurse her myself all night.
The first thing to do is to find out what is the
matter." A sharp look from the faded eye of
Mrs. Miles was lost upon him. " What, dear ?"
bending over Cara; "you were dancing? And
did you fall? And why were you dancing so
much?" His voice was very tender indeed,
and his face kind and gentle as he looked at
her.

214 GALLIA.

A look of intelligence came into her eyes.
" I was frightened, and so I thought I would
dance and dance . . ."

He shook his head vaguely.

" Bein' no stairs to come up and down," said
Mrs. Miles in a furtive undertone and glancing
round the building in a depreciatory manner.

" Stay by her and watch her, and I will fetch
a doctor," said Mark, getting up. " Or no,
better you go — you will know the neighbour-
hood ; I will stay and look after her. Tell him
to come at once."

" There's two in the Square, but perhaps you
wouldn't wish" —

" Either of them ; whichever is youngest and
will come out quickest : it must be past two
o'clock. And you need not come back."

He shut the door after her carefully, and then
came back to walk to and fro in the room with
a puzzled face. Once he stopped to open the
big skylight, through which the pale June stars
looked very far off. Gurdon was a humane
man, although he had had few opportunities of
making the discovery. He was now much dis-
turbed in mind, and with strange accesses of
unselfish kindliness assailing him. He looked
frequently at Cara's flushed face and tossed hair ;
sometimes he stopped and smoothed her fore-
head with his hand, but for the most part he
strode up and down quickly and silently, his

GALLIA. 215

black evening shoes making no noise upon the
boards and rugs of the studio.

Three-quarters of an hour passed before the
brisk step of a man outside announced the
arrival of a doctor, hurried and a trifle irritable,
as a man might well be who had gone to bed at
twelve, after a long day, and been roused at 2.30
from his deepest sleep.

He looked sharply at Mark and his evening
dress, and appeared to think someone else would
come forward to explain what had occurred, and
what was wanted.

Mrs. Miles had gone home, and the burden
of the situation was with Mark. The doctor's
manner and the nature of his questions caused
him some embarrassment, but the seriousness of
the interview made him forget it again.

He could give very little information about the
illness, and the doctor had to be contented with
the fact that Mrs. Miles would give a full account
in the morning. But Mark held the lamp while
Dr. Hudson made a hurried examination, and
waited eagerly for the temperature to be men-
tioned.

" She will do nicely if this fever can be kept
down : I will send you something at once to
fight that ; there is a messenger call at my house
in the Square, and several all-night chemists.
Inconvenient? Oh, she might be in many a
worse place. Plenty of good air here, and the

216 GALLIA.

quietest spot in London." He began to write a
prescription on a leaf of his pocket-book. " You
say you can get someone to look after her at
night. Very well, but I will send in a nurse first
thing in the morning, with your permission, to
attend to the patient and prepare her for my
visit about ten. Np, we can do nothing more
now, save keep up $he strength a little and get
the temperature down. To-morrow I shall be
able to make a definite statement about the cause
of trouble." He looked up, this keen, worldly-
wise young man, and met Mark's still rather
puzzled eyes. "I have no doubt I am leaving
the patient in the most careful hands, meanwhile.
Good-night."

"When he had gone, Mark sat down by Cara in
the empty, quiet studio and looked long at her
little face, pale again now with a fine saffron
pallor. "Poor little thing, I suppose you owe
this to me," he said.

CHAPTER XXII.

During the fortnight that followed the party
at Holland House, Gallia had been rather busy
socially.

A number of her mother's old friends, people
whom she knew only in the traditional family
way, sent invitations of a quiet kind to her;
almost every day she seemed to be lunching
with someone, and she appeared at a number
of the fashionable afternoon concerts. In the
mornings, after her ride, she more than once
secured Margaret to do some shopping with her,
and in the course of time a silvery grey and
white plumage replaced the black of her ear-
lier mourning months. Then suddenly Lord
Hamesthwaite decided to make an immediate
move to the Hall, and some housemaids were
despatched to help the permanent staff of ser-
vants there to be ready earlier for the coming of
the family.

Mrs. Essex and Margaret had to be prevailed
upon to come sooner, for Gallia had no desire to
be left alone in the country. She had appeared
to fall in with her father's idea, and there was to
be a constant succession of guests throughout the
summer, since she refused to go abroad.

x 19 217

218 GALLIA.

Mrs. Leighton, immersed in the formalities
of the cure at Aix, was feeling astonishingly
miserable.

" I am not sure that I have ever been so ill as
during the first week at this atrocious place. I
should leave immediately if I were not too pros-
trate to travel. How infinitely preferable a nice
English attack of rheumatism would be. But I
needn't distress you with the wails of a tiresome
old woman, particularly when I have something
quite important to say, and the pains in my
right arm threaten to prevent all correspondence.
This, then, dear Gallia, is what troubles me.
Robbie is coming home. He has not dared to
write to your father since the dreadful letter he
received about two months ago, the result, I have
always been convinced, of an entire misconcep-
tion. Spain still seems to be a very difficult
country to travel in, especially when one leaves
the beaten track, as Robbie in his adventurous
way naturally hastened to do. He gives me the
entire explanation of the gambling episode ; and
you will remember I endeavoured to assure your
father at the time that he was taking too severe
a view altogether. It seems that Robbie had
engaged a mule, and packed all the delightful
draperies and embroideries he had secured upon
the beast, as well as his luggage, containing,
foolish boy, his reserve sum of money. At the
end of an exhausting journey across the moun-

GALLIA. 219

tains, he drove this beast into a stable, and
actually in the time that he was eating a most
unsavoury meal, the animal and all the baggage
disappeared, stolen, of course. He wasted about
a week in fruitless endeavours to secure the
attention of the authorities, and it was only then,
when he was at his last penny, that he gambled
for pesetas — for his dinner really, poor boy — in
the low inns and among the gipsies. I want you
to have him at the Hall at once, if you can ; you
will find him full of delightful stories, and you
will persuade your father to be more lenient to
him than he has been before. If we back him
up, he says he will have no difficulty in establish-
ing himself in London, now that his course of
study is over."

That merely made one more for Gallia's little
house-party, and she remembered Eobbie as an
engaging, open-natured, happy-minded fellow,
who would be a certain acquisition in any country
house.

She came down the staircase from her own
rooms after reading Mrs. Leighton's letter,
dressed for going out. In the passages and on
the landing were plenty of signs of a hurried
flitting. The servants were at work rolling up
carpets and taking down curtains, and making
other preparations in view of the house being
closed for three or four months. The mechanism
of housekeeping was a dead letter to Gallia ; she

220 GALLIA.

had no idea of the time and trouble, the myriads
of small duties, that go towards managing a
house. If she had known, she would have been
filled with a very wholesome and active con-
tempt for half of the accepted formulae; she
would have instituted a sweeping simplification.

Just at that moment, passing down the stairs,
her eye fell on a soft-headed brush with a brass
attachment in the middle of its abnormally long
handle, and a wonder as to its use seized her
suddenly, and she paused in idle irony with her
hand on the balustrade.

At that moment came a crash, a cry, and some
detached screams, from behind one of the big
white drawing-room doors. She hurried into
the room, and her appearance seemed to add to
the confusion of the knot of maid-servants gath-
ered round a fallen step-ladder, opposite one of
the four windows. A heap of pale yellow silk
damask mixed up with the latter suggested im-
mediately that a servant had fallen while taking
down a curtain. As the window was some
twelve feet high, there was the material for a
very pretty accident, and Gallia crossed the room
at her swiftest pace to see what was amiss.

" Which of you is hurt?" she demanded of
the astonished group, two of whom were on the
floor supporting an older woman, and one me-
chanically gathering up the curtain and seeming
to examine it for possible damage.

GALLIA. 221

"Never mind the curtain, Emily. What is
this ? who has been hurt ?"

" I don't know if the ladder could give way,
miss, or if she overbalanced herself," the maid
began. " I didn't see it myself," she went on,
with the usual haste of a domestic to clear her-
self in view of possible blame ; " I was over at
the mantelpiece moving the corner-pieces."

" It's the charwoman, miss, that was on the
ladder," broke in Fraser, the second housemaid,
" and I think it must have been in reaching up
too high above her head. I told her to go up
a step more and she'd have been more at her
ease."

" You told her ? How could you do such a
wicked, lazy thing ? You were too idle or too
frightened to go up yourselves, and so you sent an
old woman up to do your work. I am ashamed
to have such women in my service. Emily, go
for Mrs. Bostock at once."

The words fell slowly and coldly from the
dispassionate Gallia. Very seldom indeed had
she occasion to address any of her servants, with
the exception of her own footman and her maid.
She was held in the awe with which all servants
regard a mistress who is habitually unconscious
of their existence.

The girls flushed hotly at her reprimand, but
did not dare to offer any excuse. Gallia took
the place of one of them beside the injured
19*

222 GALLIA.

charwoman, and in a few minutes Mrs. Bostock,
the housekeeper, arrived.

" I think we must have a mattress and carry
her to the nearest bedroom ; I fear it is serious."

It was wonderful how quickly the poor soul
was carried to a bachelor bedroom on the same
landing, by the now eager servants, reinforced
by the footman ; but it was Gallia's own hand
that applied the restoratives and brought back
groaning consciousness to the sufferer.

Mrs. Bostock had left the room with a maid
on a search for different bedding; Emily had
borne a messsage to the carriage which was
awaiting Gallia, and now drove off for a doctor ;
and Fraser, as principal culprit, had escaped to
a more sympathetic milieu in the servants' hall.
Gallia was alone when the charwoman came to
her senses.

" It's my side, m'm, — my lady, — an' my back.
Oh lor ! oh dear ! My back struck the floor and
the ladder come a-top of me; I 'ope I 'aven't
broke my column ! But it's my side as feels the
wrinch ; it never 'as been right since a fall I
'ad in our mews when I was going with Johnnie ;
stipped on the cat, I did, a nasty little sandy
cat Miles kep' in the stable — 'e was drivin' for
Serumfry Paget then. Oo — ooh !"

"Yes; now lie still for a minute, and first drink
some of this. "When you feel a little stronger,
we will get your clothes off."

GALLIA. 223

" Thank you, my lady. It is a gnoring pain
just above the 'ip joint, an' " —

" Now pray be silent, or you will exhaust your
strength, and won't be able to tell the doctor how
you feel," Gallia said, in her firm, quiet voice.
The effect of this remonstrance lasted several
minutes, no doubt by virtue of the last touch,
which appealed strangely to Mrs. Miles's pride
of ailment.

It was Gallia who assisted her own maid to
undress Mrs. Miles; it seemed to her the French-
woman's hands moved fussily about the task.

" Six years have I come in an' out this house,
and nothink never happened," Mrs. Miles maun-
dered on in an undertone. " 'Twas me as took
down the drawing-rooms when they was cherry
and cream — cherry and cream with gold galoon,
'ung in panels, they was" —

" Can you bear me to turn you just a little, to
unfasten your skirt ? That will do. ISTow, then,
just a moment — yes, I am sure it pains you, but
you will feel better when they are off."

With that tender firmness which some women
have by nature, some others learn in the hos-
pitals, and most never learn at all, Gallia re-
moved the poor outer clothing, multifarious in
strings and pins. Further than this she hesitated
at first to go : would the poor thing feel more
uncomfortable to have a lady or a servant made
familiar with her shifts and makeshifts ? Gallia's

224 GALLIA.

good sense decided for her, and she proceeded
with her task.

" Me lyin' here," began the woman, in a more
excited key, " and poor Missie with no one to
'ot 'er beef-tea for Jer, nurse bein' out, for I
promis' to run in at dinner-time, it's only ten
minutes in the bus !"

" "What are you anxious about ? Do you wish
a message sent to your home? That will be
easily done ; I will call Emily, and you shall tell
her"—

" Oh, it isn't that, my lady. Oo— ooh !"

" Bear up a little longer ; see, take another
drink of this. There. I sha'n't take off the
bodice, just loosen it upon your chest a little."

An instinct taught Gallia that small soothing
sentences, at short intervals, kept the patient's
attention from her hurt.

"Never mind," as something slipped to the
floor from Mrs. Miles's shawl-spread bosom ;
"it's only a letter, I'll put it on the mantel-
piece"—

" Oh dearie dear, whatever shall I do," the
poor creature wailed suddenly. " Missie told
me to be sure and send it ! I had to put it in
the pillar before twelve, so as 'e'd have it early
this afternoon."

" Make yourself quite easy about it ! Ah, I
hear the doctor coming ! I shall give orders for
you to be well looked after, and shall be back in

GALLIA. 225

two hours, to see you myself. The letter ? It
shall be sent at once by one of the servants."
Gallia took it hastily, and called a soft " Come
in !"

Mrs. Bostock ushered in the doctor, and after
a few words of explanation, Miss Hamesthwaite
hurried to the carriage. She was over-due in
Hammersmith Terrace, where her mission was
to prevail upon the Essexes to hasten their visit
to the Hall. In the outer lobby she stopped.

" Kuowles, I wish William to take this letter
at once to" — she turned it over as she spoke,
and her eyes fell on the address. The note was
directed to " Mark Gurdon, Esq., The Colonial
Office, Whitehall." But this was not what sur-
prised Gallia, or convinced her that her own
footman had best not deliver it. " Never mind,
Knowles, I shall not require William."

She got into the carriage, and sat reflecting
while Hendon waited for his order.

" Stop at the first boy-messenger office," she
said.

All the way down Kensington Koad she kept
thinking. Gallia's was a very alert and ready
mind, but she was puzzled to think how Mrs.
Miles should be in possession of a note from a
sick person, to whom she referred as " Missie,"
which was addressed to Mark Gurdon — in Mark
Gurdon's own handwriting.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Two days later, Gallia and her father left for
the country, and they left in Lord Hames-
thwaite's favourite manner, namely, in their own
carriage.

Without being enormously wealthy people,
they were decidedly rich, and for a man in his
position Lord Hamesthwaite's expenditure was
inconsiderable. He could afford, he averred,
to sacrifice a pair of carriage-horses every year ;
for this his coachman never failed to convey
to him was what must happen if he insisted
upon driving the two weary roans, fat and arti-
ficially spirited, over forty miles of Surrey turn-
pike in the middle of July. A second pair was
therefore ordered from the Hall, to be in readi-
ness at Guildford, and, covered with dust, father
and daughter duly arrived at their beautiful
Surrey home, which had been restored by Gallia's
grandfather, and still preserved the quaint charm
it had possessed as an old red-brick and timbered
manor house.

Those two days had been busy ones for Gallia.
She had saddled herself, considering it the
barest duty, with the care of the poor char-
woman who had been injured in her service,
226

GALLIA. 227

and Mrs. Miles was now established in the
neighbouring hospital, with two fractured ribs
and an easy conscience. For had not Miss
Hamesthwaite, than whom no one was more
delicately reserved in the matter of befriending
and patronising the poor, herself sent down to
"the Mews" and arranged that one pound a
week should find its way to the pocket of
" Halice," the thirteen-year offspring of the
drunken coachman and the poor hard- worked
soul, who had said piteously, and without any
sense of its humour, " If you'll believe me, my
lady, I've never 'ad a day's illness nor a day's
'oliday since I was married," regarding both as
equally desirable respites.

These arrangements had not been concluded
without a second and even third conversation
with Mrs. Miles, in which further information
regarding Mark Gurdon's connection with " lit-
tle Missie," as well as the illness of the latter,
had formed a large part of Mrs. Miles's super-
fluous running commentary. The accident and
the attention she was exciting made Mrs. Miles
more talkative than usual, and she insisted upon
choosing Gallia as the recipient of her confi-
dences.

Gallia had no experience in dealing with
women of this class, — indeed, Miles was the first
specimen she had come across, — and although
she sometimes succeeded in stemming the tor-

228 GALLIA.

rent of wholly irrelevant matter, and always
succeeded in greatly impressing the charwoman,
she every now and then became inundated and
swamped by fresh streams, and acquired perforce
much private information concerning the inner
life of an acquaintance. Putting aside her an-
noyance at having learnt certain private facts
about a man she knew, the whole thing had,
from many aspects and for many reasons, an
effect on Gallia's mind.

The day after her arrival at the Hall, no visi-
tors being yet come, she went briskly out to the
stables to choose which horse she would ride.
She felt the necessity of a long time of thought,
and she knew nothing so conducive to it as hours
in the saddle by field and fallow, by copse and hill.

The stables were a great feature at the Hall,
and Lord Hamesthwaite was, distantly and quite
ignorantly, very proud of his horses. For him-
self, two would have been sufficient; the big
white horse he drove in town, and the solid,
fiddle-headed cob he rode in the country.

But with Gallia it was different. Her pair of
skewbalds and double dog-cart were known in
every village in the "Weald ; nothing could beat
her little Norfolk trotter in the dark-green cart ;
and her particular pride was a perfectly ap-
pointed Devonshire donkey jingle, in which a
very fleet dark jackass flipped along the road
on pointed hoofs.

GALLIA. 229

This time she rode a half-bred Arab, capable
of a ten-mile canter which bade fair to send its
rider to sleep, and took her way by a bridle-path
through a wood of chestnuts.

A smiling morning of perfect summer did not
reflect smiles on Gallia's face. She rode along,
wrapt up in her own thoughts, unconscious of
flowers and birds ; observing the road before her
and her horse in that accurate but mechanical
fashion common to all good riders. Her face
was in its severest mask. She was paler than
usual, owing perhaps to fatigue, perhaps merely
to mental tension. She was searching diligently
in her brain for the reason of a sensation she
had experienced. She was perplexed because it
seemed to her she had been guilty of a logical
inconsistency.

The proposition, as she phrased it, was this :
she had heard that Mark Gurdon had a mistress.
That was the initial fact. On hearing this, she
had been conscious of strong moral revulsion.
And that was the crux : considering what her
own view of the subject had always been, that
put her about.

Why should she experience a sense of nausea
on hearing as much about any man? Why
particularly about Gurdon, whom she had met
less than a dozen times, and merely liked with a
liking the most ordinary ?

She reflected upon this without any solution^
20

230 GALLIA.

occurring to her, and her manner of reflection
was peculiar. Just as she would have all the
world be fair and honest with all the world, so
she was fair and honest with herself. She re-
garded herself, very reasonably, as two people —
her reason as one person, her feelings as another.
She imagined in her mind a kind of platform
from which first her reason spoke, and, as it were,
stepped down ; in the open moment that fol-
lowed, her feelings made themselves heard in
the same place.

At length it struck her that until she could
discover whether the fact of a man keeping a
mistress would disgust her, should she hear it of
any casual acquaintance, no conclusion could be
come to.

" My feeling is so odd and vague in this matter
that 1 think it must be a sort of elemental sex
impulse speaking in me, and not personal feeling
at all," was the leaf of wisdom that floated from
the big tree and fell at length upon the surface
of her mind. " I must put the question to some
other girl." Miss Janion's personality flashed
before her, and she smiled — smiled, and then
laughed aloud, so that Mahmoud turned one ear
backward shiveringly. It would be amusing to
have Miss Janion down when Lord Shillinglee
and the others came, for instance ; but the ques-
tion should be put to Margaret during the first
private talk they had together.

GALLIA. 231

She gathered up her reins, and the light press-
ure of her leg behind his girth opened Mahmoud
like a pair of scissors, and he bounded off for a
gallop.

" There is a human soil in human thought of
which the oak trees, thank God, know nothing !"
Gallia laughed again at the confused feeling she
had attempted to put into words, and Mahmoud,
taking that as an encouragement, thrashed his
feet into the deep summer dust of the road, that
stifled the green acorns with white powder.

"When she had swallowed sufficient of the
tonic of a gallop, Gallia settled her horse to his
exquisite Eastern pace. Past a common with
necklaces of young geese upon it ; then a halt
while a gate was deftly opened, Mahmoud breast-
ing it at the instant Gallia's crop loosened the
catch ; forward again, this time on a wood road,
where squirrels and partridges crossed almost
beneath the horse's nose ; past openings that
showed sudden cornfields; past hazel coppices
thick with green cobs ; past tangles of ripening
bramble-berries; past farms and new ricks of
hay, smelling stronger, and a thousand times
more sweetly, than the corner of Bond Street
and Burlington Gardens, till at length, outside
the village of Hiddenfold, Gallia drew rein.

" Ah, it is too hot for this," she said, casting
back her open coat and wondering why she
had let herself get so hot. " I shall positively

232 GALLIA.

have to see if I can get some lemonade some-
where."

Mahmoud blew a portentous snuffle, the best
sound save a whinny that can be heard from a
horse, when Gallia brought up at the door of a
little thirteenth-century inn.

As everyone knew Miss Hamesthwaite by sight,
attendance to her wants was swift. The homely
ginger pop from a stone bottle completely re-
freshed her, and she drank it slowly, unabashed
by the eyes of two dusty cyclists who, with
purple faces and necks above their grey club
clothes, were irrigating lime-choked channels by
means of a quart pot of shandy-gaft'.

Gallia's roving glance penetrated easily to the
interior of a tiny sitting-room on the left of the
door, and she was not much astonished to recog-
nise a friend extended in a long basket chair in
the shade of the window geraniums. At his full
length, in cool grey, a grey crush hat still upon
his head, waistcoatless, with a white silk shirt
rising and falling to every breath, lay Dark Es-
sex, sound asleep. The table was covered with
papers and books and other signs of industry,
but the worker, looking amazingly handsome,
lay stretched beside his tools, overcome by the
warmth of the day. Though she had heard lie
was at " a little pub in Surrey," as he had
phrased it to his sister, she had not known that
Hiddenfold, only some dozen miles from the

GALLIA. 233

Hall, was the spot lie had chosen. Looking
round, she did not wonder at his choice. It was
a delicious village.

" I rather wish he were not here," Gallia said,
as she finished her drink hastily, " and yet, why
not? "Why not? On the whole, I am glad.
He is the one person in the world I can talk to."

With some caution she put Mahmoud on the
turf and crossed the green rather than risk
waking the sleeper by riding past his window.

20*

CHAPTER XXIV.

The first few days of Margaret's stay were de-
voted by Gallia to giving her riding-lessons in
the park, and driving her about with her mother
in the afternoons. Once or twice Gallia had
mooted an invitation to Hubert Essex to walk
over and lunch or be driven over to dine, but
always Margaret had gently negatived the plan.

" He is so hard at work," she said ; " if you
would like me to be frank, I will say that he
would be angry with me for letting you know
his whereabouts."

" That would be very silly of him," observed
Gallia, smiling. " And, you know, it is possible
to refuse an invitation."

" Of course, but he would think he ought to
call, and I don't suppose he has more than one
suit here."

" Men's sense of etiquette — which must pro-
ceed from vanity — is a thing I cannot keep pace
with," Gallia remarked, blending a touch of con-
tempt with her indifference.

"And there is another reason," Margaret said,
with reluctance.

" Of course there is another reason. You are

234

GALLIA. 235

afraid my attractions might prove too strong for
his sensitive nature. Naturally I divined that."

Margaret laughed.

" Well, you know, it wouldn't he at all odd if
he did fall in love with you, but I should be
sorry, because it would only make him unhappy,"
she rejoined, with some spirit. Gallia smiled
out over the park. " You may laugh," continued
Margaret. " I know you don't believe in men
having feelings like ours."

" On the contrary, not like ours, but simply
the counterpart of ours."

" Hubert is a curious silent creature, but that
is not to say that he has no heart."

" Very true."

" Gallia, you are laughing again ? What has
made you so hard upon men generally V

" Me hard upon men ? What a wild idea ! I
like men extremely. I'm more at ease with
them than I am with women; I've known far
more of them intimately. I'm not sure that I
don't think their make-up much honester than
women's. How can you call me hard upon
them?" She argued with the greatest good-
humour, for she was attached to Margaret, and
liked Margaret to assault her. " Simply because
I have dared to hurst their cocoons ; to wind off
some of the strange silky poetry that has been
wrapped round them by generations of women
and their fellow men. I don't believe all this

236 GALLIA.

about men's feelings, because I've never come
across any of it; that's why. I explain such
evidences in a totally different way, and I claim
that my way is a great deal more in accordance
with the facts. There you have it."

" The long and the short of it is, that you
don't believe in love," said Margaret simply, and
with a small air of offence. " But you will fall
in love yourself some day, and then you will see
what it is like."

Gallia's cheek darkened for a second, then her
face cleared and she leaned far back in the win-
dow-seat they were occupying, and passed her
hand up and down the shining cold edge of the
old-fashioned rose-patterned chintz curtain.

There fell a long silence between them. Gallia
felt no inclination to make any reply : she did
not even realise that the moment was one emi-
nently suited to confidences; and if she had,
it would have made no difference. She had
never experienced, in all her life, the faintest
desire to confide in anybody. This reserved
habit of mind made her, at one and the same
time, in some things so wise, and in many things
so ignorant. Margaret saw her flush, and felt a
moment's expectation; then she divined that,
though Gallia might be, or have been, in love,
she had no desire to describe her experiences.
She broke silence, therefore, in a half-whispering
voice.

GALLIA. 237

" I have heard it said," she began curiously,
" that every man is a widower when he proposes."

" Ah ! Have you indeed ?" Gallia was roused
from her abstraction and gleamed with dark
humour upon the speaker.

"And yet," Margaret continued, in a hesi-
tating manner and with a little lurking hope in
her voice, — " And yet, one always hopes, if one
did fall in love some day, it would be with a
man who had been as little of a widower as
possible !"

The humour of this speech threatened to over-
come Gallia's gravity; in spite of Margaret's
touching earnestness, she would have given way
to a strong desire to laugh, perhaps, unless she
had had a very clear motive in hearing the girl's
views frankly and confidently expressed.

" Instinctively, then, you dislike the idea ?"

" Oh, I think it dreadful ! Everyone must."

"Do you think it dreadful all the time — or
only when it is brought home to you in connec-
tion with one of your acquaintances ?"

" "Well, of course, it's a thing one tries to think
of as little as possible^" Margaret said emphati-
cally.

Gallia noted this with a certain bird-like alert-
ness of glance.

" But every time it does come into my head it
horrifies me ; of course, more than ever about a
man I know."

238 GALLIA.

For the moment Gallia could not be quite
sure whether this referred to an experience, or
whether Margaret spoke prospectively. She
waited. The speaker continued musingly —

"As a rule, I suppose it is just about men
whom you know that you don't hear of it."

A caustic smile hovered on Miss Hames-
thwaite's lips.

" I believe it is a canon of decency to conceal
such facts ; one owes it to one's women friends,
men think. But, Margaret, if you knew and
liked a man, — if he was a friend, you know, —
you wouldn't dislike him if you discovered that
he had a mistress, for instance ?"

Margaret turned a much-startled face from the
window.

" How" — she began, and then suddenly re-
covered her composure. "I shouldn't dislike
him — as a friend — I suppose."

" But— as a lover ?"

" Oh," she cried quickly, " I could not bear
him as a lover !"

" But, my dear girl, men being what they are,
is that reasonable ?"

" Oh, there is a difference between believing
a thing to be generally the case, and knowing
it to be the fact. Oh, do say there is."

" Oh, surely. And there's a difference to an
ostrich who has his head buried — or hasn't, as
time and opportunity have allowed."

GALLIA. 239

" Gallia, you are fearfully severe. I suppose
there are some girls — the Gertrude sort of girls,
you know — who don't mind at all. But most
girls — of some heart and feeling — most girls do
feel it dreadfully."

"If a man were here, he would exclaim
piously, ' And God grant there may always be
such girls in the world, or what hope has a
man of keeping straight1.' " Gallia laughed de-
lightedly. "Yes, we have proved there are
three sorts of women. The bad ones, to fan the
flame of men's vices — a red flame that, for the
sake of the picturesque ; the good girls, to feed
the white flame of their virtues; and the in-
between girl, who blows neither fire, and can
warm herself indifferently at both."

" But you, Gallia, you ? You have never said
what you think of it."

" Oh, for me, I would love any man who at-
tracted my mind, who shared my tastes — I mean
my sort of love, you know; but it would be
independent of any idea of marriage. To a
certain extent, then, and with regard to marry-
ing, I think my ideas on other points lead to
my preferring the ordinary man." This she said
very thoughtfully, and with a marked, earnest
voice. " There are a lot of passionless men
about nowadays," she went on in an easier tone,
" and it would be terrible to marry one by mis-
take. Yes, I have decided. It is quite reason-

24:0 GALLIA.

able— which is the main thing. I shall make no
fuss about it if my future husband has a past —
of a reasonable colour."

" I think — if I loved a man" — Margaret's face
and voice partook of an ideally exquisite qual-
ity as she spoke — "I think I could forgive
him."

Gallia gazed at her in admiration.

" You are the being biology will never explain.
You keep alive the old tradition about soul, and
angels, and saints, and spirits. JSo scientist
living but would forswear his whole life's labour
for you if he saw you at this moment ! Wouldn't
he, now?"

" Nonsense, Gallia ! I am nothing of the
kind.'* She laughed charmingly. " Though, of
course, I know" — with a great attempt at frank-
ness— " that I am pretty."

"You beautiful, silly soul! I believe you
honestly think that's all that's the matter with
you. Come down, and let us get the letters
which have just trotted across the park on
Punch's back."

They ran downstairs together, and fell upon
the post-bag in the hall.

" Ah, more excitement ! The great man from
Africa arrives in London to-morrow, and — good-
ness ! — this is from Robbie Leighton. He's in
Paris. He's coming — when ? Oh, I'm to expect
him when I see him."

GALLIA. 241

Margaret made some comment or other, but
her pensiveness lasted all the afternoon. Per-
haps she was going to be called upon to forgive
him — a part women have ever loved to play.

21

CHAPTEE XXV.

Quite the typical country house party was
gathered beside the cedars one afternoon some
few days later. It was the kind of day upon
which no object was quite still before the eye,
every tree and flower seemed to tremble, rather
to shiver lightly, in the gold heat, which was so
intense as to appear solid, corporeal, to lie like a
weight upon the earth.

While tea went on under the trees, the light
oak luggage-cart could be seen upon the winding
drive making its way downhill towards the high
road and the station. Just in front had passed
a pretty pair-horse victoria, and it was quite in
keeping with stable etiquette that the victoria
drawn by the two fretting thoroughbreds should
start slowly in advance, and the luggage-cart,
which flew easily, behind a less important equine
character, should come after.

John Denyer was expected from London,
where he had passed a few days on his arrival,
and whither Lord Hamesthwaite had travelled
three times to see him on important business.

From one of these visits the Colonial Secre-
tary had returned with a question to put to his
242

GALLIA. 243

daughter. It had taken her a good deal by sur-
prise.

"Ask Mr. Gurdon down here? Oh, surely,
if you like. But why am I to write ? You know
him, papa, I suppose better than I do ?"

" I have seen him perhaps three times socially.
I met him at your Aunt Celia's one night a little
time ago j and I have happened to meet him
twice, or three times since" —

" And you met him at a dinner at the Reform
last year, for I recollect you told me of it," Gallia
put in.

"Very true, no doubt; but it had escaped
me."

" And in your own department too !"

" In my own department I have of course been
aware of him, my dear, but I have not known
him."

" I suppose he is a mere menial in the depart-
ment?" said Gallia wickedly, for she was not
above laughing occasionally at her father's pom-
posity. For a wonder Lord Hamesthwaite de-
cided to take this seriously.

" I greatly wish, Gallia, that you had acquired
some of your dear mother's genius for compre-
hending important social matters ! Mr. Gurdon
is a very remarkable young man. His sagacity,"
Lord Hamesthwaite continued, as though he
were referring to a water-spaniel, — " his sagacity
is amazing. Quite amazing. I am not mistaken

244 GALLIA.

when I tell you that Gurdon is a man with a
career before him. He is not yet thirty, and he
has been singled out. Besides, he is most gen-
tlemanly and of charming manners. Denyer
took a great liking to him when they met in
Africa."

" Oh ! So he met Denyer in Africa ? I never
heard him say so."

" You have indicated his greatest talent. lie
is a young man who does not feel it necessary
to say everything that he knows or that he has
done."

Gallia might not have a head for affairs, but
she was quite sharp enough to know that this
was very high praise. She had often heard her
Aunt Celia say that Mark should be helped on,
and she was able to perceive that he was in a fair
way to have her father's hand reached down to
him.

"Shall we therefore say Thursday?" Lord
Hamesthwaite inquired, with a smile. He was
a great deal too courteous to leave his daughter
with the recollection of something like a repri-
mand from him in her mind.

"Yes; I'll ask him for Thursday, papa."

Lord Hamesthwaite turned rather nervously
towards her on his way to the door.

" You don't dislike Mr. Gurdon, Gallia, I hope."

" Tout au contraire," she replied lightly, "I
like him very much."

GALLIA. 245

The discussion ended, the note was written,
Gurdon was free, and would be delighted, and
consequently arrived in correct form in time for
luncheon on Thursday. The same afternoon, a
dishevelled young man stepped out of a station
fly, with a battered brown bag in his hand, and
bade the footman be careful of the foreign-look-
ing package he was taking from the hands of the
driver.

" Good gracious!" exclaimed Gallia, who was
at that moment issuing from the hall door, ac-
companied by Margaret. "It is Robbie." Mar-
garet could have told her as much, for it was
indeed no other.

The young man swept a Spanish sombrero
from his head with an insouciance that was
native and a flourish that was foreign, and dis-
closed the astonishing effect produced by a per-
son having hair much fairer than his skin.

He shook Gallia heartily by the hand, keeping
his eyes well upon her face and his sombrero at
his side.

" Miss Essex I once had the pleasure of know-
ing in Paris," he said, with a neat little empha-
sis, just marked enough for Margaret to hear
upon the " once."

"I have not forgotten you at all," said the
exquisite Margaret, with a tender music in her
voice, and upon her face a smile only just large
enough to love.

21*

246 GALLIA.

" Good heavens ! passionately attached to each
other, I declare," said Gallia inwardly, and re-
flected further that a charming scamp like Mr.
Robert Leighton was precisely the kind of being
Margaret was framed to waste herself upon.

Robbie's behaviour from the first hour of his
arrival left no doubt of his feeling to Margaret,
and Gurdon, for one, observed it with much
peace of mind.

He was extravagantly charming to Mrs. Essex
— utterly enthralled by Margaret, of whom he
made sketches in a dozen fictitious characters,
and of whom he immediately undertook a serious
portrait.

This very portrait was under discussion as
they sat at tea, awaiting, on Gallia's part with
some excitement, the arrival of John Denyer.

" Now look here," Robbie exclaimed, leaping
up wildly with a teacup in his hand. " My idea
is to have her here — Miss Essex, do you mind —
just half a minute ? Thanks — by this pink peony
tree. In this same pink gown. No hat on.
Drenched in sunlight — you see ?"

" She will have sunstroke to a certainty," cried
her mother.

" Face, hair, hands, all that wonderful gold
shade," Robbie went on, with unabated enthusi-
asm,— " that grey atmospheric gold ; and then
the peonies and the dress — masses of bluish-
purple."

GALLIA. 247

" But they are pink," suggested someone diffi-
dently.

" Actually, but not relatively !" cried Robbie,
with much fervour. " Actually we know they are
pink. Relatively we see they are bluish-purple.
One paints what one sees."

An impressive silence followed tbis explanation
of the method of art.

" Then I am of course going to do a head in
the old Italian manner, with a gold background.
Gold is Miss Essex's inevitable setting. But it is
among flowers that a large portrait should seize
her. Dear Miss Essex — is it troubling you too
much ? Just over here. The pink of your gown
is simply inspired! I see a most fascinating
scheme, by using that sheet of poker-red nastur-
tiums as a background."

They strolled off together, amid a chorus of
laughter and shrieks of horror ; but the earnest-
minded artist and his victim heeded them not,
and it may be stated in Robbie's defence that
he did paint that picture, and that it acted as
an extinguisher to some two hundred and fifty
other pictures in the centre of a room at the
Grafton Galleries.

Gurdon was a silent member of the party.
He had wondered why no one wanted to paint
Gallia, a slim, silvery figure with a dense blue-
green feathered arm of the cedar behind her.

Her old plainness of attire was no longer

248 GALLIA.

indulged in. "Whether she thought it seemly,
as the hostess of a large establishment, or
whether it was the outcome of but another
personal whim, Gallia had chosen to be rather
magnificent in her costume of late.

From her head, on which she wore one of
those French rustic hats, with cobwebs of lace
draped over the brim, so unbecoming to almost
every Englishwoman, to her feet and ankles
in their silvery-grey stockings and grey leather
buckled shoes, she was perfect. Sitting with
her legs crossed, the dove-coloured ruffle of her
petticoat — pale ashes of roses tint — was a delight
to see, and perhaps it was because he enjoyed look-
ing at her so much, that Mark found little to say.

Mrs. Essex was not a talkative woman, but she
was a good listener, and little Lord Shillinglee, a
young man of enormous wealth and no fixed po-
litical opinions, was giving her plenty to listen to.

"Ah, you see they haven't got the money,
Mrs. Essex; these Radical fellows '11 promise
anything to a man who will back them up a bit
with some money. I'm a bit of a Eadical
myself, you know, though this lawn isn't the
place to say so, eh? And I really shouldn't
mind going in with them, if it was only to hear
the other side curse — I beg your pardon, Mrs.
Essex, but they would, you know." He dis-
solved in a malicious little chuckle, and shook
furtively within his baggy clothing.

GALLIA. 249

Gallia looked down at him, where he sprawled
awkwardly at one side of her, and then over to
Mark sprawling gracefully at the other. Her
mind was busy with the contrast when the
carriage came up to the front door. Lord
Hamesthwaite at once went to receive the short,
well-built man who got down from it.

" Ah, there is Mr. Denyer," said Mrs. Essex,
and the eyes of the party were for the moment
directed to the group. A few minutes later the
great man was among them. Mark Gurdon's eye
never left Miss Hamesthwaite when the intro-
duction was being performed. All her whims
of manner, the scorns and ironies and indiffer-
ences of youth dropped from her, and left a
picture of the woman she would be in a few
years' time, when her slow development had pro-
gressed.

Only the ease and dignity natural to her posi-
tion, as well as the graciousness that was her
own, appeared in the pleasant words of welcome
that she spoke. A certain glow rose in Gurdon's
mind, as he caught this glimpse of the stately
and social Gallia he had seen once before, with a
difference, at Holland House. Entirely with-
out " beauty manners" at all times, Gallia some-
times lacked something of the influence the man-
ners of a beautiful young woman give her. It
is most fortunate that the generality of beautiful
people behave as though they were beautiful —

250 GALLIA.

for this, not their actual claims of form and
feature, is what the mass of mankind observes
and responds to.

Denver had been moving among the groups,
but he came and stood beside Gallia and looked
across the park. The figure of Mr. Essex, in
his light-grey clothes, was seen crossing the
grass to the house.

" Ah, Miss Hamesthwaite, can you guess what
it is to a man whose eyes have been accustomed
to the far lovelier flowers of our Dark Continent,
to see again a sward, moist and velvety, freckled
with daisies ?"

Gallia responded intently to the touch of real
emotion in the man's voice. She was inter-
ested. Her greeting to Essex was unconsciously
shortened.

" How exquisite your Surrey is ! A garden,
a series of parterres. One of oak forest, one of
chestnut plantation, one of meadow grass, one
of corn or flowers."

" It must seem wonderfully small to you.
But it is rich, really very rich — and would go so
much further if the people knew anything about
exploiting it. You, in Africa, can compel set-
tlers to the use of more scientific means of cul-
tivation ; nothing compels them here !" Gallia
spoke with a note of regret and bitterness, then
stopped to give Mr. Denyer a cup of the tea that
had just been brought out.

GALLIA. 251

" Expensive business trying to start new agri-
cultural methods in this country!" remarked
Lord Shillinglee, who had abandoned agriculture
for coal, and saw no reason to regret it.

" Very, eh, Gallia ?" cried Robbie, with the air
of acute mischief. " Let me see, what did your
van cost when you were so hot on agricultural
reform ?"

" Miss Hamesthwaite, this is news !" cried
Mark, much interested. " How much truth is
there in the accusation of philanthropy ?"

Gallia turned to him, smiling. " I'm afraid a
good deal," she replied. " Others enjoy telling
that story more than I do — ask papa about it."

Lord Hamesthwaite appeared nothing loth to
provide details.

" Ah, those were the days of our enthusiasm,"
he said in a good-natured, quizzing fashion.
""We attended the classes at an agricultural
college throughout a whole session. Then we
started a van and selected our own teachers."

" Then it was partly your scheme ?" inquired
Mrs. Essex.

"Not at all! I was severely neutral. This
young woman did the whole thing. Let me see
— what did the van teach, Gallia ?"

"Farmyard Economics," said Gallia briefly,
suppressing a smile. ■

A low, delighted chuckle from Essex greeted
the reply.

252 GALLIA.

" It wasn't agriculture, it was simply, as I say,
Farmyard Economics we wanted to teach. We
weren't in connection with, far less in opposition
to, any of the efforts made by the societies ; but
I thought, and for that matter still think, there
was room for the practical enlightened common
sense our people talked. My two young men
lectured in turns in the van."

" Of course free?" from Gurdon.

" Oh, certainly, free !"

" The expense was all upon the other side,"
said Eobbie, laughing. " It cost a pretty penny
to compel them to come in — to the van, didn't
it, Gallia?"

" You will never be happy till I tell you what
it did cost," Gallia said, looking over to him.

" For how long did you pursue the idea ?"
Denyer inquired.

"For a season, commencing in the middle
of February and continuing to the beginning of
June."

" Well, it cost just a fraction over a thousand
pounds," said Gallia reluctantly. This statement
excited much delighted laughter.

" Farmyard Economics !" murmured Essex in
a tone of irresistible gravity.

Gallia swept round upon him.

"Well, I paid two young men, bought two
horses from papa — and he let me have them very
cheap, I remember they were £40 apiece. Then

GALLIA. 253

I had to have the van built. It was a beautiful
van, painted in grass-green and corn-colour, with
appropriate mottoes — no, I will not divulge the
mottoes round the top. That van cost over £200,
although I designed every bit of it myself" —

There was more laughter, in which Gallia
joined frankly.

" But what industry and application on your
part, Miss Hamesthwaite !" Denyer said, looking
admiringly upon the beautiful face.

Gallia coloured.

"I was just growing up," she said, more
seriously, and Avith a return to the irony of her
ordinary mood. " I had been too well fed, I
suppose, all my life, and I had a good deal of
superfluous energy to work off. Besides, I was
just at the age of devotion and anxiety to do
good, and that sort of thing. It didn't last long,
and of course I see the folly of it now."

This speech affected various of her hearers
very differently.

Gurdon's face, in spite of his enjoyment of the
details of her scheme, had been alight with in-
terest and admiration. He had thought that
Gallia affairie would be more charming a picture
— a reality — than any other Gallia. He thought
that eagerness and warmth and interest must
have greatly become her dark beauty, which a
touch of too much cynicism made somewhat
inhuman.

22

254 GALLIA.

Denyer, experienced man and diplomat, leader,
organizer, financier, and ruler, was interested
too, because he was faced by something he did
not understand, and could not account for. To
Denyer nothing that he did not understand was
small or unimportant. The mere fact that he
did not understand it gave it a certain importance
in his eyes.

Essex, with eyes half-shut and blinking at long
intervals beneath his hat brim, scrutinised less
her face than her mental attitude. The mere
details of her expression were less noticed by
him than a scarcely perceptible uneven shifting
of her figure.

" In Miss Hamesthwaite's mind philanthropy
appears to rank as an intellectual nettle-rash," he
observed critically. " Some people get nettle-
rash at forty."

Gallia had fallen into a smiling melancholy.

"It's usually a youthful disease, all the
same," she said. " I have been so long grow-
ing up," she continued, with an air as though
she had just perceived the fact. " You know
when you are grown up because you accept
things. I scarcely can yet, I want to fight
everything and have everything new and made
new again."

Denyer and Gurdon smiled discreetly and
politely in admiration of her lighted face.

" What an innocent lady !" said Essex sweetly.

GALLIA. 255

" Still at the age of comparatives. Good. Bad.
Indifferent."

She turned to him.

" Prophesy, if you like," she cried. " I know
you want to! That I shall come to an even
mean, yes ? "Well, it is quite possible."

CHAPTER XXVI.

There are only two kinds of people in society,
and each kind is admittedly equally tedious.
There is the person who thinks one should " be
oneself" at all hazards, and the person who
thinks that at no hazard should one be oneself,
but always someone else.

At the first blush, the first-named commends
himself most to an honest mind, but before de-
claring for him it may be well to pause.

Change and recreation are the inevitable food
of man. Sooner or later the human being who
has decided in favour of "being oneself" will
take a holiday, draw a long breath, and decide,
for refreshment's sake, to be someone else. It
is at this juncture that you may meet him, and
how are you to know ?

Equally inconvenient, and even more common,
is the second breed of human — he whose creed
perceives a certain indecency, at any rate an im-
politeness and an inexpediency, in being one-
self, and who is customarily engaged in being
someone else. This person is equally certain to
pack his bag, so to say ; expand his chest, and,
with defiance in his eye and custom beneath his
heel, decide to " be himself." And if at this
256

GALLIA. 257

point you have fallen in with him — well, how are
you to know ?

The worst of the business is, that it is usually
on the occasion of a handsome crisis in their
lives that people behave in this way. And if
you yourself are mixed up in the crisis— if it is
your crisis too ? At any rate, there is comfort in
knowing that a crisis is the finest setting for a
mistake. Seldom, if ever, does a mistake have
fair play and become fully recognised unless it is
made at a crisis.

Fortunately, it usually is, and that is why we
hear so much about mistakes.

When Dark Essex kissed and passionately
loved Gallia in the Cloisters of Westminster —
was he being himself or someone else ? And
was it his moment of change, or his age of cus-
tom ? Had he prefaced his abandon with this
unspoken flash of thought : " By heavens, I'll act
like any other man" ? Or with this : " For once,
then, a mad once, I'll let myself go" ? Gallia had
often wondered. So had Essex. It formed an
interesting speculation for his leisure moments,
and to facilitate its study he sought Gallia's so-
ciety— or rather her neighbourhood — from time
to time. As a part of this seeking, he decided to
accept the invitation for the day on Hindhead.

The advent of Miss Janion to the Hall had
decided Gallia on making this expedition; she,
entertained a wholesome fear of the "maiden-

• r 22*

258 GALLIA.

up-to-date," if left, for whole consecutive hours,
loose about the house and grounds. Gertrude
was a person who liked to " do something." She
came down in the best of clothes and conse-
quently in the best of spirits too, prepared to do
any number of things, and in appropriate dresses.

" Shillinglee ?" she cried, as Gallia ran over
the names of the house party. " How amusing !
How is it, I wonder, that one never goes to a
country house without meeting the man one last
refused? And he always takes you down to
dinner, too."

" Well, in point of fact, I had" — Gallia began
vaguely.

"I know! Of course; you had arranged it!
My dear, don't alter the table for me. I've gone
through it with others, and I can again."

Gallia laughed. "You'll accept him this
time," she said.

" Shall I? I believe I shall. He said so the
other day at the Prince's garden party, I remem-
ber. What a gathering! never in all my life
have I seen" — and so the chitter-chatter had run
on.

While the household was still at breakfast,
there was heard the heavy clopping of under-
bred hoofs upon the drive, and when they looked
out, there was Essex, mounted on some strange
quadruped he had hired from his inn at Hidden-
fold.

GALLIA. 259

" Ah, but you haven't felt him trot !" he said,
with academic gravity, as he came into the
breakfast hall and shook hands. "You see
he is accustomed to working front horse in a
team of three. I call him, most incorrectly, the
Teamster."

" Well, I think you had better abandon him
and see what we can do," Lord Hamesthwaite
called from his little table near the fire.

Breakfast was agreeably broken up at three
little tables, and Gallia and Margaret were in a
square window embrasure, supported by Gurdon
and Lord Shillinglee.

Robbie was described as not up yet. Mrs.
Essex was described as not down yet. Gertrude
was described as not dressed yet.

Everyone admitted that it was a lovely day.
Mr. Essex sank into a chair and tapped his
boots.

Gallia noted, with a feeling of dislike, when
she handed him a peach with a bit of ice in
place of the stone, that his feet were too small.
In the Cloisters, just when he took her hands,
she had observed that his hands were too small.
It was a blemish in so handsome a man; a
blemish that gave her a feeling of discomfort.

They were to start in twenty minutes.

" JS"ow may I order you something that corre-
sponds to one's idea of a horse — or will you
prefer driving ?" she said hospitably.

260 GALLIA.

For a second the crazed suggestion lightened
in Essex's brain that he would first like to know
if she were riding or driving. Then he reflected,
sensibly, that of course he wouldn't have cared
to know anything of the kind.

Any woman would have perceived that Gallia's
snowy spotted muslin was never put on to be
taken off again in such a hurry.

In her hat she had followed Margaret's plan ;
it arched eave-like above her hair ; but over it,
as she was driving, she had carried a broad wisp
of incredibly soft French lisse, which broke in a
foaming bow under her chin.

Beside her, Margaret, in the green of young
willows, and a hat trimmed with their garlands,
seemed the most delectable of summer morsels.
Gertrude wore a coaching dress from Paris,
which had to be seen to be credited. In time
they started. Gallia drove Mr. Denyer behind
her Norfolk trotter. The main party came on
the coach, Lord Shillinglee proudly exercising
his only known and proven talent, handling with
beautiful dexterity what Gallia called her scratch
team.

The picturesquely English start from the fine
old house was greatly enhanced by the solitary
equestrian. Mr. Essex had abandoned the Team-
ster to the heaviest oats the brute had ever en-
countered, and was mounted on Gallia's black
hunter. This exquisite beast had not done a

GALLIA. 261

day's work for many months, and only enough
exercise to keep him in condition. "When he
came out of the stable, shining like a looking-
glass, and as supple as a Persian cat, Gallia
apologised for his flesh.

" If you are determined to ride, you shall at
least have a good day," she said, as she looked
over his hitting with a careful eye. " Spain's
paces are really divine."

Spain proceeded to illustrate this the moment
his rider's weight was in the saddle.

"You could ride him on a thread of silk,"
Gallia said proudly, as she watched the beast
playing with his feet, " hut you'll soon see what
Spain is made of."

" Liquorice and aguardiente, I should think,"
said Robbie.

Gurdon looked on, and wished he had been
riding also. 3$o man should miss an oppor-
tunity of riding when he wants to make an im-
pression on a woman, provided he never loses
his temper with a horse and can ride.

" When you first went to Spain, how did you
make yourself understood in the wild places?"
an obvious association of ideas led Margaret to
ask, as they bowled down the avenue.

" Oh, I learnt some Spanish in Paris ; short
sentences, you know. There was a little girl
there, daughter of an old model, who put lots
of useful tips in my way. Of course you remem-

262 GALLIA.

ber young Lemuel, Gurdon !" He leaned over
and threw this question behind Lord Hames-
thwaite's shoulders to Mark.

" Oh, yes, perfectly," Gurdon answered, won-
dering what had put the girl into Robbie's mind.
But he was destined to receive no information,
for Robbie was a scatter-brain, and any notions of
sequence in conversation were foreign to his type.

Gurdon had excellent reason not to forget the
girl; at that moment he had in his pocket a
brief note from her, forwarded from his club.
She was still in Brighton ; she was almost strong.
"It was so gay and jolly after town; she hoped
he was amusing himself wherever he was. She
had got the cheque all right. The doctor thought
another fortnight would quite set her up ; he was
such a nice doctor; quite young; he had sent
her tickets for two afternoon concerts." He
mentally conned over all the short, shallow sen-
tences. He was sorry for the girl, not because
of her position, but because of her nature. She
must so certainly go one way. A man's most
pleasing inconsistency is his earnest pity of an
unfortunate. It gives the good people hope of
his redemption ; it assures the average, clear-
headed people that there is no possible hope of
hers.

He was sitting where he could see a stretch of
exquisite country on every side of him ; feeling
the exhilaration in the light rush of summer air ;

GALLIA. 263

within touch of the fluttering laces that came
warm from Margaret's neck and tapped his
cheek, and were recovered and apologised for,
made fast and blown loose again, — Margaret, the
woman he had at one time thought he loved.
In front of him, a bright speck upon the road,
sometimes basely swallowed by a covetous hedge
curve or a greedy group of trees, was the little
cart crowned by the white figure of Gallia.
Sitting there, it struck him that surely no man
ever saw the cobweb threads of his destiny so
thickly floating in the air before him. Now one
tickled his face and now another. Now it was
Margaret and her whilom charm that he thought
of; now it was Gallia and the strong fascination
she had for him. Then it was the letter in his
pocket. He remembered that other coach-drive
in Paris two years ago, when he had sat beside
Mont Voisin and talked horse-breeding in the
latest cuvee of Paris French — when he had been
troubled by those underthoughts about his career.
Then he had not been getting on. Since ? "Well,
since had come his private secretaryship — not to
the man he wanted, but still, to a very good man.
Then Denyer's return home, unexpected, too
good to hope for, as it had seemed. And a few
chance words must have passed between Denyer
and Lord Hamesthwaite. The Colonial Secre-
tary must not know what he had owed, frankly
and directly, to the discretion of one humble

264 GALLIA.

underling in the big office ; an underling who,
happening to have a little money, had conceived
the idea of spending his two months' rest in
Africa, the country whose name was under his
eyes some fifty times a day. Lord Hamesthwaite
must know, or wherefore this sudden patronage ?
Mark was far too clever to think of it as any-
thing else. Life seen from this coach-top was
somewhat different indeed ! His alertness had
served him very well. So had money which he
had put away carefully when his father died,
and there was more of it left yet.

A less acute young Englishman would never
have imagined it worth his while to take the
particular journey Mark had taken ; to fall into
intercourse with the particular men Mark had
thought it well to meet ; to get to know the facts
of a case as Mark had got to know them ; to earn
the personal commendation of the strong man
on, the spot, John Denyer ; to ignore the fact of
his connection with the big office at home as
Mark had ignored it; to come home and hold
his tongue about the whole business as Mark
had held his.

"Distrait, am I? I beg your pardon!" he
said, in answer to a playful poke from Mrs.
Essex. " I was thinking about the last time I
was coaching ; it was from Paris to Auteuil and
back. I was thinking of the astonishing differ-
ence in the outlook."

GALLIA. 265

"Ah, quite so. The races, I suppose? Oh,
a very gay scene in France, of course. I remem-
ber, when I paid my daughter a visit, we were
driving, and saw the people coming hack from
Longchamps. Different indeed ! One could not
imagine a sweet Surrey road holding such a
company."

They were pulling up the steep winding ascent
to Hindhead, the breath of the pines was about
them, the air was full of the hum of ardent
bees constraining the heather to an early bloom.
Upon the links of road visible some mile or
two behind was Essex on the slim black Spain.
In front was the green cart, with the brilliant
Norfolk bay throwing himself at his collar, and
Gallia's smiling face turned backward, as it
seemed, looking at him. Gurdon's road had
changed indeed.

23

CHAPTER XXVII.

"You see, it's not as though I had a sixpence in
the world." Mr. Leighton raised himself to a
more upright position on the heather and made
the familiar gesture of pulling his watch from
his pocket. " Look here !" the chain came out
neatly, and was found to have a curious piece of
copper money attached to it. " You see what
time it is with me !" he added, with a touch of
easy tragedy.

" Oh, you don't really mean" —

He interrupted the soft note of shocked amuse-
ment in Margaret's voice.

" Indeed I do. Had to, positively, to get down
here."

" How dreadful for you !"

" So we should be as poor as possible at first.
But not for long. I have lots of old stuff that
would feed the Spring Exhibitions for some time
to come. And I should paint portraits. I should
get on at that, I know. You see, to be a por-
trait-painter, you only want two things." Robbie
screwed up his face and tried to look practical.
" You want to paint the right people, and you
want to paint 'em in the right way."
266

GALLIA. 267

" Yes," said Margaret, with deep sympathy in
her face.

" Now, as to the right people, I should be in
rare case. Grannie would help me to rope in
the right people." She nodded. " And as to
the right way — well, you see my way in that big
plein air I'm doing of you."

" You mean the grey, gold, and bluish-purple
one ?" She might well ask. Robbie had at least
five canvases on the way.

" Yes, that's it. I'm painting people in greyish
gold and purple just now. I mean, that's how
I see them, you know. "Well, after all, a man
only wants a manner." He put his hand through
his yellow hair and pulled several stray locks
down over his cedar-coloured forehead. "So
that we should be perfectly independent, you
know; I'm sure you couldn't bear to feel de-
pendent on anyone, and I know I couldn't. And
Grannie makes a lovely background to a fellow's
life."

Margaret laughed. She was one of those
women with a silver laugh. They are really the
nicest kind.

" Oh, Robbie," she cried, " don't make your-
self out such a dreadful goose and such a
naughty boy as well, or I don't think I really
can" —

" Now don't say it, Margaret, or you'll regret
it ! You do love me, you must love me, for I

268. GALLIA.

have loved you ever since that day in Paris when
I first saw you. You remember ? It was your
first morning at the studio, and you didn't know
your way about. I shall never forget the colour
in your face when it dawned on you that you
were in the wrong studio. You looked divine !
The fellows talked of you all morning."

" It was one of the most frightful moments of
my life," said Margaret faintly.

"By heavens, what a subject picture that
would be! I see the whole thing; I should
treat it as an upright. Your face would be the
warmest note of colour, the prevailing tones
would be grey, and the faint pinks of the model
would support your pink blush. I shall do it !
I shall call it ' A Rose in Error.' No, ' An Er-
rant Rose.' You wait."

" Robbie, you think of nothing but painting
me."

" You're wrong. I think much more of loving
you. I have thought of that since ever I've
known you."

" Hush !" She raised up a white and very
pointed forefinger. " Don't say that. There was
one time when you didn't think of me at all.
But we won't talk of it any more." She sighed
and drooped her serious eyes.

" My darling girl, we must talk of it, if you
are to be so madly mistaken as all that. I swear
that I have loved you ever since I have seen

GALLIA. 269

you. I may have been a bit wild. I may not
have been all the time just what you would
have wished me to be — and what your love will
always keep me." He took her hand and kissed
it, and looked up at her with deep sincerity in
his face. She responded to it by leaning forward
and putting her lips to his forehead. It was
the first time she had volunteered the smallest
caress, and for a moment he lost his head. It
was much credit to him that he found it again
and continued. "But you have kept me
straight." This he said, spacing the words to
give them more emphasis. She looked at him
rather wonderingly. " Why, dear, you can't
imagine the things I might have been up to in
Paris."

" Don't tell me, Robbie ! I'd much rather not
know."

"My dear child, I wasn't going to tell you.
How can you suppose that I would ?" He put
both his arms round her, which brought his head
on her shoulder, since she was seated on a tree-
root somewhat above him. " Don't let us talk
of it any more now, dear. There is nothing,
Margaret, I swear it to you, nothing that any
good woman would not be able to forgive.
You know there are vast differences in men ; I
can't explain 'em to you exactly, but there are.
I don't lay claim to many shining virtues, but
among men, you know, and by men, you under-

23*

270 GALLIA.

stand, I should come out pretty well. For I've
never been a bad chap, really."

Whether memory suppressed an echo in Mar-
garet's mind cannot be told; at anyrate, they
were very happy after this, so happy that they
forgot everybody but themselves ; which is the
only trustworthy symptom of true happiness.
Fortunately, most of the party had expected that
this picnic would " bring matters to a head"
between Mr. Leighton and Miss Essex. The
dependence of the upper classes in England
upon picnics as an emotional opportunity is
positively pathetic. The excellent meal, which
forms the inevitable prelude to that moment at
which one may get away and talk with the only
person one desires to talk to, was over. It had
been accompanied by no greater excitement than
a wonder as to what had become of Mr. Essex.
He had been at most a mile and a half behind
them when last seen, and yet he had never
appeared.

A footman had been despatched to the inn at
which he had been advised to leave Spain, and
had returned with the curious intelligence that
the horse was in the stable and that Mr. Essex
was in the inn. Mr. Essex had asked for a
room, and some ink, pens, and paper, and had
left orders that he was not to be disturbed.

" Seized with an inopportune attack of literary
creativeness," Gurdon had observed, smiling;

GALLIA. 271

and nobody found a better explanation to
offer.

" Sucb an odd boy be always was !" his mother
plaintively added, not without some pride in his
oddity, however.

So lunch had passed over without him, and
then Margaret and Robbie had wandered off,
taking advantage of irregularities in the rolling
heathland and other bits of cover with a deftness
that would have put a detachment of infantry to
the blush.

The rest permitted an opposite direction to
attract them, and strolled quietly along, Denyer
and Mark Gurdon walking on each side of
Gallia at first. There was nothing particular to
do. The object of the expedition had been the
drive, and they were to drive home by another
road, which would give them an extra five miles
and a great deal of delightful scenery.

Returning from the walk, Gallia went on in
advance to give her orders about putting in the
horses. Leaning up against the coach she dis-
covered Mr. Essex, with that peculiar air of
coolness, paleness, and dark handsomeness that
distinguished him.

"Really, at the top of that three-mile hill,
Spain and I had worked so hard that we were
both unfit to join the party. The landlord
deeply sympathised with my condition, and he
and his man put me' through a wonderful twenty

272 GALLIA.

minutes. It seems they have a great experience
in towelling the cyclists. After that I lay down;
after that, I am ashamed to say, I went to sleep."
These explanations flowed smoothly from Mr.
Essex, and wore an air of such truth that the
footman packing a hamper close by paused in
his work and marvelled.

Gallia had turned to Mrs. Essex with some
laughing allusion to the cause of her son's dis-
appearance.

"Do not be any quicker than you can help
with the horses," Essex remarked, catching the
groom's eye and bidding adieu to half a sover-
eign at the same moment. The man understood
him, and passed the word to his helpers.

" May I claim the last ten minutes of this
delightful hour, Miss Hamesthwaite ?" Essex
said, approaching her as she stood in brisk talk
with Mark Gurdon. She looked up at him at
once — the curious still atmosphere of strength
and hidden thought about the man always com-
manded her attention. " I should like to show
you the greatest curiosity in the neighbourhood,
and I think you may have missed it. It lies
over here."

"Mr. Essex excites my interest!" she said
to Mark. " "Well, then, don't disappear when
Brownie is put in, because she will not stand,
and you know I am to drive you home."

"Whether this remark disturbed Essex or not,

GALLIA 273

he certainly spoke no word as they walked off
together.

" But you said it was over there ?" protested
Gallia, pointing with her parasol, and then
opening it suddenly.

" Truly," he rejoined, altering the direction of
his steps. Still they went on in silence.

"What were you doing at the inn?" Gallia
asked, as they descended a hill among the pine
trees.

"I was writing to you," answered Essex
quietly.

"To me?" — she looked up in surprise at his
face.

With a sudden change of his absorbed manner,
he met her eyes and put life into his glance.

" To you. See this !" he showed her an en-
velope with her name upon it. " Shall we sit
down here on the edge of this little pool? It
looks deep, doesn't it ?"

Gallia was conscious that the day had changed,
that her frame of mind must alter to be in keep-
ing with it, that something serious was coming
to her. There was no fascination, no magnetism
about Essex's glance, but there was, now and
then, a curious deep, still fondness in its depths,
which lingered for a very little moment, just
long enough to obtain recognition, and then left
mockery, of himself as much as others, in its
place.

274 GALLIA.

" I have changed my mind about my letter : I
shall throw it away," he said.

"Don't do that ! It would spoil the heather."

Essex laughed.

" What a pity I am not a sentimental fellow !"
said he; "there is a beautiful opportunity for
bitterness there. !Nb, we will dig a hole — and
■ bury it. Some little mice will gnaw it up and
make nests of it, and still smaller mice, of a
fleshy shade, shall nestle in it, — good." He
began to make a hole just between them as
they sat. Still digging, efliciently enough, with
a long silver cross that hung on his watch-chain
but never dangled publicly upon his waistcoat,
he began speaking.

" Don't be impatient, Gallia : this is the last
of me."

"What is?"

" This little talk to-day, and this buried letter."

" Don't bury the letter — let me read it first."

" And bury it after ? !Nb, indeed. Some let-
ters are meant to be buried. I see that in any
ease you would wish this one buried, so my last
service shall be to bury it for you."

" Your last — and your first service."

He looked up.

" That's not true. I have done, first and last,
a great deal for you, Gallia. First and last, good
or bad, I have done a great deal. For six years
I have been a great deal in your life; often I

GALLIA. 275

have involuntarily given the tendency to your
thoughts. When we met, what were you like ?
Ah ! how different you were !"

"I remember myself perfectly. I could cry
now for what I suffered! How hard I have
taken everything! How brackish and bitter
every experience of my first youth tasted !
Drowned in sea-water, life has been for me. I
was hot-spirited, raw, impatient; clever, sensi-
tive, shy, vain, self-conscious; Avith an abnor-
mally developed sense of the ridiculous ; too shy
even to cherish a fine ideal inside myself. Then
you came along, and how much bitterer and
more brackish things seemed to you ! What a
cynicism I found in you ! What crude brutality
you served out to me !" She recapitulated these
Ahings as though they had been long unthought
of in her mind, as though she saw and recog-
nised them clearly now at last for the first time.
Neither looked at the other, they stared out
across the wonderful waves of green Surrey far
into the blue of Sussex.

"Yes. I spoilt you and warped you — unin-
tentionally, of course. I used to think of you
much more than I would ever admit, you know.
Then, when I was tutoring in Greece and trail-
ing cubs about Asia — those strange letters that
you wrote to me. Three of them I remember,
in about two years."

" I used to be moved to write them after long

276 GALLIA.

spells of a lonely sort of misery and dissatisfac-
tion. Usually at night."

" Once by moonlight — so you said."

" Quite true ; one does that sort of thing at a
certain time in one's life. And your replies !
Good heavens ! ' I perceive in the lower corner
what you would no doubt wish me to consider a
tear-drop. Do not, dear lady, do not impress so
honest an object as the bedroom ewer, to support
these figments of the imagination.' " Gallia
laughed with a suspicion of sadness in the voice,
sadness for those old days when such nonsense
had made her so miserable. He joined in even
less gleefully. Then they both said the same
thing at the same moment, which often happens,
but has, nevertheless, an odd enough effect.

Gallia. " I was so fearfully in love with you,
you see !"

Essex. " You were so fearfully in love with me,
you see !"

At this they laughed again.

" "Well, it was that, I suppose," Essex said]
and then, looking at her, added. " The thing
has evened itself up since, hasn't it ?"

She did not answer.

" Let me see the letter before you put it in."

" No ; the letter belongs to something that has
no further existence."

" And was it not the curiosity you wanted to
6how me ?"

GALLIA. 277

" No. Iwas the curiosity — and still am. But
not of the same sort. I have repented me of the
evil."

" Why ?"

" I didn't know you were going to drive Gur-
don home, before. I do now : that little fact has
changed my life-plan. I can't help feeling you
are right to drive Gurdon home and marry him
afterwards. I think he will do very well. He
is really quite a fine fellow, Gurdon, and he will
have all the position you care about. I know
you don't care for family."

Gallia had not interrupted any of these state-
ments regarding her future course of action.
She contented herself by saying, " My dear Dark,
we haven't any family ourselves. Nice, middle-
class people raised to uncomfortable prominence
by a vulgar title."

" No doubt," he assented calmly. " Still, that's
just why you might have been expected to stand
out for family, you know."

"We can do without it. Money I have in
plenty. Gurdon will achieve all the position
necessary for a man to have. He has the kind
of talent that is indispensable to a Conservative
Government. They can't get on without the
keen talent of business men. Look at papa!
They got in papa, in the face of enormous
Cabinet opposition, to morphine the Colonies
after the machinations of a Marquis. Forgive
24

278 GALLIA.

me all those silly m's. And see how it has
worked. The Radicals have had to stoop and
collar labour to keep them going, the Tories have
stooped too and collared the shopkeepers — our-
selves— to keep them going."

"A facile explanation, Gallia, with as much
truth in it as any woman can arrange artistically
in her statements."

" I was talking of Gurdon's position as it
affects himself, not as it affects me, for it doesn't
affect me. It's as a man that Gurdon appeals to
me."

" You are perfectly right," said Essex smoothly,
dusting his small, sallow hands with a handker-
chief; " he has all the manly qualities."

"He has. He's got virility, alertness, no
vague nebulous tract of country between the
place where his ideas are born and the place
where they are shaped for practice. He is keen
and gamey and lifey. Then he's got iron self-
control, a princely obstinacy, an imperial power
of faithfulness." Essex assented with his head
several times. " Added to which, he is a hand-
some fellow, with all the bone and muscle and
blood and fibre that a man ought to have — not
wasted by athletics, nor injured by slothful-
ness."

" My dearest girl," Essex said, when the list
of Gurdon's virtues was full, " he's the very man
for you. Marry him. Marry him by all means !"

GALLIA. 279

"I am glad you think it is all right," said
Gallia heartily. " There's nothing in which two
heads are more conspicuously better than one,
than in deciding a point of this kind. The suc-
cessful marriage is when you happen to want the
man that other people would have chosen for
you."

" Entirely so. People have proved thousands
of millions of times that it's the last move to
base upon one opinion only, and that your own."

"Well, you see why I'm going to marry him?"

"Oh, I do."

" And I explained all my views to you before
— as to what I expected to arrive at for myself."

" You did indeed."

" Dark, you aren't being sympathetic : what's
the matter 1"

" JSTothing, dear."

There was a pause, during which they sat as
before, looking over to blue Sussex. Gallia's
face was a little discontented.

" And now," taking out his match-box, " let
us burn the letter. On second thoughts, I won't
let mice nibble it to pieces. Ashes are, I believe,
employed as a fertiliser. Do you think a sprig
of white heather would be so obliging as to
spring on the grave of my hopes ?"

" Your hopes f"

" That letter was to tell you that — Do you
mind putting up your parasol ? I can't get this

280 GALLIA.

match to light; thanks ! — You see, I didn't know-
till now that you had decided."

" Yes, I think I have decided."

" Do you mind telling me, are you going to
love G-urdon at all ?"

" I like the ' am I going to,' " she laughed.
" No, Dark. The thing is not written in that
key. I finished loving anyone — you know
when."

" I know when. "When I began to love you."

" Was it ? "Well, that was the nick of time."

Her eyes were on the flames of the thin cream-
laid note-paper of the inn.

" I would not ask to see that letter, though,
of course, I would like to have seen it, just as
much as you would like to have shown it me.
I believe I can control the woman in me some-
times."

" My dear," Dark Essex looked up with a naif
illumination of face and a very delicate playful-
ness of voice, " that's your one failing ! — Now,"
rising as she rose, " shall we fly in the face of
custom by not kissing each other ?"

She smiled her sweetest, her most delicious
smile, and walked with a graceful floating sort
of swiftness over the heather. Very soon they
could see the coach— the reins were just being
buckled at that moment. Something had de-
layed the men.

"All the same," said Gallia, turning to him

GALLIA. 281

and pausing, "I think one may over-do one's
sacrifices, in order to fly in the face of custom.
"We run the risk of giving custom too much im-
portance." Essex made a gesture of despair,
and indeed he felt some in his heart. " If he'd
had a pinch more of the common vices of a man
about him," commented Gallia to herself, with
the whimsical network showing on her forehead.

" I swear I'm so accustomed to acting as if
I've no feelings, that I begin to think I haven't
any !" was Essex's reflection.

Essex was a distinctly clever fellow, but he
lacked a great deal of valuable common knowl-
edge. For instance, he had never heard that
there is often precious little fighting in the
soldier who is too good at drill.

24*

CHAPTER XXVIIL

" Ten miles — with plenty of hill — in fifty-four
minutes."

Gurdon took out his watch to make a calcula-
tion. They were on the level just then.

" Really, it is good ! Do you think driving
fast can make one hot, or is it really very warm ?"

" It is warm, but you are at a certain strain to
watch the road when we are going so fast, and
the excitement heats you."

" She is perfectly sure-footed, and I have
never known her to stumble — but of course
one must — Hullo ! Aha !"

At that instant the horse had stumbled — it
was only a small stumble, but Gallia pulled up
immediately.

" I'll go back and see what it was." Mark
got promptly out and walked along the road;
there was an inch deep of powdery sand in the
track, and among it more than one rounded
stone. He came back and reported, and they
went on again, but Gallia's brow was knitted.
The next two miles were covered much more
slowly, and conversation was somewhat dis-
jointed.

" There ! I was afraid of it, she's going lame

282

GALLIA. 283

of that near fore ! Never in all the four years
that I have had her has she known one minute's
lameness. She must have strained herself in
recovering. We shall come very soon to the
Noah's Ark Inn ; I will etop there and rest her
for half an hour."

" "We might have tea, perhaps ?"

Mark knew much better than to offer to look
after the horse; he went and found the ostler,
however, and then he set himself to ordering
tea and strawberries in a quaint little sitting-
room looking out upon a garden choked with
flowers.

The strain was rather more serious than she
had imagined, and Gallia was about twenty
minutes in getting a hot-water bandage on the
leg, after having bathed it as long as the hot
water of the " Noah's Ark" — a tap which had
small popularity, apparently, and was little in-
quired for — held out. She came in at length
and described her labours.

"And I am afraid, do you know, that we
must go home by train ?"

" Very well. "What a pity for the little horse !
You will want to take him too. Shall I get a
man to go to the station, and see if by any
means a horse-box can be had ?"

She gratefully accepted this suggestion, and
Mark went to put it in force at once.

"At anyrate," she said to herself, as she

284 GALLIA.

arranged her hair at the oblong glass on the
over-mantel, — " At anyrate, he is a person of
resource in little things. So tremendously
necessary. He is the kind of man who would
miss the last train, and arrive just the same. And
one has to admire that. "Whereas, poor Dark —
dear, dear ! how much one could love Dark for
being totally without that sort of quality !"

Gurdon came in at that moment.

" It is all right ; the man has gone. And I
just gave him a telegram to the stationmaster at
Haslemere, asking him to put a horse-box on to
the 6.35 from there; so that even if there is
none at this little place, you will probably get
one all the same."

" "What a useful person you are !"

Gallia looked laughingly at him. This fresh
proof of his readiness in little things amused her.

" Do you dislike useful people ?"

" How should I ? Ah, here is tea !"

She helped the dumb, heavily - breathing
country girl to spread the table, then she lifted
a pot of musk from the window and put it in
the centre.

"What a gracious sort of thing to do ! thought
Mark.

They sat down. As is usual in the country,
the bread was greyish and a little sour, the
butter was salt and out of a tub, the jam was
somebody or other's whole squashed fruit, and

GALLIA. 285

the tea someone else's best bonded, which recalled
the delicious hay of a year ago. They had no
fresh eggs, and they had no cream, and they had
no water-cress. But Gurdon was in love with
Gallia Hamesthwaite, so it didn't matter.

And Gallia Hamesthwaite was in love with
logic, so it didn't matter.

"Ah!" he put down his cup with rapture;
"friendly Brownie ! But the Brownies belong
to the good folks, don't they ?"

" They do. And this time their little doings
will be the means of keeping us away from our
friends till eight o'clock, and making papa very
anxious."

" He surely won't be so anxious when he
reflects that you are with me?" Gurdon said
rather foolishly, with the carelessness of a
person who is wanting to say one particular
thing, and bestows the least possible attention
upon any other subject that may happen to come
up.

He received a look of cool inquiry from Gallia.

" He will be anxious about you too. Brownie
should have taken care of both of us, and
Brownie didn't."

"Brownie has been the means of our being
alone here together," said Gurdon boldly. " I
seem never to have found you alone in my life
till now."

" Why should you have expected to ? The

286 GALLIA.

way we all live is calculated always to bring
people together in droves, not alone together."

" But how can you get to know anyone whom
you persistently meet in droves ?"

" Somehow or other, even in London, you do
find yourself alone with people who want to
know you, and whom you want to know." Gallia
spoke musingly, the long dim cloister at West-
minster rising before her eyes.

" It has never yet happened to me."
" It has happened to you here to-day."
Still there was the cloud of elsewhere in her
eyes, the tentative remote tone in her voice.
Mark was no psychologist and it did not disturb
him.

" ' And He and She the hanquet scene completing,
With dreamy words and very pleasant eating,' "

he said contentedly, holding up a really quite
presentable strawberry.

She smiled upon him.

" Something has put me in mind of a poem I
once knew, I have thought of it at intervals all
day. I wonder if you know it ?"

" Let me hear it."

He said it. He had a good voice ; he said it
very well. There is no need to detail the poem.
Everybody has had such a poem in his mind
on such an occasion ; everybody will remember
some of it. It was quite the usual poem.

GALLIA. 287

"You have a great feeling for poetry," said
Gallia thoughtfully, when he had finished.

"For a practical kind of fellow, I believe
music and poetry have far too much meaning
for me."

" Do you like your life salted with poetry ?"
she asked thoughtfully still.

" If I could get it," Mark answered, smiling ;
" if not, I am prepared to do without it."

" An unusual attitude for you, Mr. Gur-
don."

" Very, I admit — I'm seldom prepared to do
without what I want. As you will have guessed,
or someone may have told you, I am a very
ambitious man."

She laughed. " I have guessed — and every-
body has told me besides."

" Think of the most ambitious design I could
entertain — towards you, for instance."

He had courage, but he lowered his voice and
he spoke slowly, very slowly.

Gallia looked at him ; her face and eyes were
not unkind, and there was a gleam of playfulness
in them.

" I think of it," she said. " And you can put
it aside at once."

He lifted his shoulders slightly, as though to
get a better breath.

" I am so in earnest," he said, with a good
deal of effort. " Gallia, I am so in earnest." He

288 GALLIA.

clasped his right hand round his left, pressed
them so, till the white pattern of each finger was
shown above each knuckle, then, still clasped,
he dropped them between his knees. " Think
what I want — I want to make you my wife !"

" Now, why ?" said Gallia, not flippantly but
with interest. " That's only the second most
ambitious design I can think of, but tell me
why?"

He missed the parenthesis, the answer to that
" why" was burning in him so hotly. He stam-
mered his reply, seemed to reject the first part
of his answer, and said, with great restraint,
" Because I admire you more than any woman
I have ever seen. And because I admire you
more than I could admire any woman in the
world, seen or not seen."

She looked at him critically.

" You shall tell me more of that later. It is
my turn to say something. You sha'n't suffer the
unfairness of the average proposal scene if I can
help it."

" The unfairness ?"

" Yes. A man has to say all the humble, un-
comfortable things, — in the sweat of his brow, —
and a girl listens calmly and allows smiles to
dawn at intervals. We won't do that. We'll
try and be more honest. So it is my turn now.
I have thought for some little time of marrying
you, and to spare you any further anxiety, I

GALLIA. 289

may tell you that I had decided to if you spoke
of it."

Mark recognised the tremendous individuality
of this speech, and took both her hands in a
grasp of great strength, a grasp that trembled
from his desire not to crush those hands too
tightly.

" Gallia !" It was a cry of great joyfulness ;
the astonishing whiteness of his face gave way
before a rush of blood. " But you mustn't accept
me yet," he said, — " not like that. I have things
to tell you, things about myself. You must know
them before you say that" — he inhaled sharply,
with a musical note in his breath — " that you will
take me."

" Of course we shall have to talk about it a
very great deal. But if I tell you a few things,
it will save time. And we can do the talking at
greater leisure."

" That reminds me" — he seized his watch and
then leapt up ; " how dare there be trains ?" He
took her hand again, even as he looked for and
rang the bell. " "We must leave instantly if we
are to walk Brownie to the station."

Gallia, without another word, flew out of the
room. Mark gave the girl who came half a
sovereign, and followed to the stable-yard. The
harness had already been stowed in the little
cart. And Gallia came out of the stable leading
a still limping Brownie by a borrowed halter.
s t 25

290 GALLIA.

They set off, Mark beside her, she leading her
horse.

The lane that Mark and Gallia followed
seemed to lead into the heart of a lemon-and-
silver evening rather than to any landward
point. They were silent for a little time. Then
Mark, after many inward hesitations, took her
free hand and held it. The conversation, so
hurriedly concluded, seemed a little difficult to
take up.

" There are so many things I must tell you, so
much to explain, so much to put you in pos-
session of," Gallia began perplexedly, as they
went along, " and this doesn't seem the occa-
sion. This is not a serious occasion, it is a sen-
timental occasion;" she placed a dreadful in-
flection on the word sentimental, which made
Gurdon apprehensive. " This lane, the scent
of those queen-of-the-meadows, the honeysuckle
and roses, that sky over there above the fir
trees, is too much for me ; the whole thing is a
stage set, and we are puppets ! I can't be
serious!" He listened very sympathetically.
"And the press of centuries of tradition is
weighing on me and pulling and dragging me."
She shook her head and threw it up as a horse
does when unused to harness. " I can't be my-
self. All the dead women in the world who
have done identical things at such moments are
coercing me, are pushing and constraining me

GALLIA. 291

to act as they did. And if I do, I sha'n't mean
it — it won't be me, it will be them — all the
women who have been loved and who have
gone before. "What chatter it is to talk of being
free, or of getting free ! as if we ever could !
Make her the moment and the man, and every
woman takes to sentiment smiling, as a little
yellow fluffy duckling flounders quacking to a
pool. Oh, what chatter — what chatter it has
all been, this talk of freedom ! Sometimes there
are moments in life when one actually sees a
little further — when emotion and excitement lift
one above the shoulders of the colder crowd.
Free ? Individually free ? Poor women, if that
is what we want ! We undo one knot in order
to be 'free' to tie another. "Women are like
members of an Alpine party — looped each to
one long rope. Even I, who have no sentiment
in me, my hands and arms would know perfectly
how to clasp you."

Mark shivered with sudden passion.

" That would be instinct," he said in a whis-
per.

" It would not ! It would be heredity ! Savage
man and woman did not make love as we do,
they had no instinct of that kind. You eat and
hunt and kill and sleep and marry by instinct —
but there is no primary instinct of love-making.
It is heredity. A trick of heredity. Hands,
arms, and lips are born with the cunning of it,

292 GALLIA.

and whether one feels like it or not has little
enough to do with it."

Mark admired her the more for this fire,
though it puzzled him.

" Gallia, can't you see what a lovely thing it
is, this sweet instinct in women — in all good
true women — to respond to, and to love the man
who loves them."

" No, Mark, I can't see it — I never could see it.
It has heen my misery always to see the ugly
side of love and love-making. And I feel caught
in a net now, a net of sentiment. No, you are
not the fowler ; it isn't your fault. It's the sea-
son and the sky and the flowers, and the whole
of nature's clever 'ticing-trap. Mark, pick me
some honeysuckle, get me some meadow-sweet —
let me take Queen Nature's shilling if I must."

In half a minute he had put a great tower of
creamy, powder-headed meadowsweet into her
hand and hung a scented trail of honeysuckle
about her neck and from her hat. She let him
kiss her as he did this, knowing that it had to
be, that the time had come for it, and verily
Mark's soul was in his eyes as he looked at her.

" How gladly I would unbe everything I have
ever been for you now !" he said, rather strangely,
and still held her face lightly with his hands.

" I forget — have you said that you loved me ?"
asked Gallia.
, " I don't know if I've said it. I don't think I

GALLIA. 293

am going to say it. There are things to tell you
first. And I think, too," — he raised his arms
above his head and looked up into the air and
seemed to expand himself to the evening — " I
think, too, if you will allow me, I will never
say it — I will live it."

"Words rose to Gallia's lips in reply, but she
6aw the lemon lines in the sky and the masses
of silver cloud and the bars of misty blue that
would be indigo in an hour, and she smelt . the
flowers, and knew the dead women of the world
were having their will of her, were triumphing
in her. She made no answer. They were both
silent. Just before they went into the station,
Gurdon said tenderly —

" I owe Brownie something !" and he stopped
and kissed the beast's bright neck, just above
where Gallia's hand lay on it, then he kissed
her hand too. " My hand !" he said.

" Oh, dead, dead women who are so strong
still !" cried Gallia in her puzzled heart. " And
dead men, too, that teach so faithfully !"

" What will you do with your flowers ?" said
the man of the world dubiously, as they went
into the station yard.

" I shall wear them," said Gallia.

"You look lovely in them," responded the
lover, with an ecstatic modulation.

25*

CHAPTEE XXIX.

As they sat down on the little narrow bench
at the end of the horse-box, opposite Brownie's
frightened head, Gallia felt the weight of the
situation becoming intolerable. Never in her
life had she put off the awkward moment, the
moment of confession, abasement, explanation
— whatever it might have been. The torments
of a person with something on his mind were
new to her. She had an almost endless buoy-
ancy of soul, owing to her habit of immediate
honesty. This moment now burdened her as
much as had those others long ago, when it had
been Essex to whom her explanation was owed.

She was silent, sometimes looking out at the
blue and black evening, sometimes letting her
eyes rest on Brownie's head. Mark had been
silent too, by way of sympathy with her mood.
Also, he had a great deal to think of. Events had
hurried him somewhat ; instead of all falling out
decently and in order, here was only another ex-
ample of Nature's or Life's lack of any sense of
propriety. It deeply offended Gurdon's sense of
decency to have spoken to Miss Hamesthwaite
while Cara Lemuel still depended upon him for
support. She would never, of course, hear of it,
294

GALLIA. 295

but Gurdon had his theories ; he honoured the
woman who was to be his wife ; he regarded this
complication as a tacit offence to her, and he, on
his own part, resented it. He was the victim of
it as much as she was. This made him silent
too. His heart beat high at his fine fortune, but
— he too had his ideal, and for the sake of an
opportunity he had not acted up to it.

He chose an outside subject to break in upon
their constraint.

" Imagine your coming in this box and insist-
ing on travelling with the horse !" he said, with
a kind touch in his voice.

" I would not have excused a servant for get-
ting into a carriage and leaving a nervous horse
alone," Gallia answered simply.

" But then it would have been the servant's
business."

" It is the business of anybody who happens
to be with a horse to look after him, isn't it?
Besides, wouldn't you rather be in a carriage
with a dear horse whom you know than in a
carriage with tiresome people whom you instinc-
tively hate ?"

He laughed.

" Oh, far rather," he said. " It is said that
women who are fond of animals to the extent
that you are, don't care for children."

" If children are as nice as nice animals, I
like them extremely. But why should one be

296 GALLIA.

expected to adore other people's children, out of
hand ? It's absurd. Fortunately it's dying out.
Now, do you like children ?"

He did not answer at once ; as a matter of fact,
he could not command his voice. He had never
had anything like this emotion to quell before —
he had not believed himself capable of it — now
it choked him. If he had at that moment re-
called his love for Margaret, — which had been
a mere drawing-room feeling, with as little sub-
stance about it as a cretonne, — if he had recol-
lected some other feelings of his in another rela-
tion, he would have shouted in their repudiation.
This, this now, was his first moment of feeling ;
he was indeed hoisted above the shoulders of the
colder crowd ; he was scarce able to breathe for
the tumult in his breast. Her question had been
put quite lightly ; she had had no arriere pensee ;
but the instant she felt him take her hand in the
spell of the silence that had fallen, and heard
him breathing, she knew a moment had come.

" I shall love my own children," he said, very
low and gravely, " if God — and you — give me
any."

Mark, the worldly-minded ; Mark, the agnos-
tic; Mark, the erect man of nowadays, whose
knee had never bent at any shrine ! And till
then he had never known any thought that went
so deeply with him ; he had never cared or meant
a hundredth part as seriously.

GALLIA. 297

Could Gallia reply ? It was her time ; she was
strangely moved ; it must have been a sob, half
of exaltation, half of regret, that he heard in her
voice. If it had been Essex who was beside her,
whose hand was in hers ! If he had said those
last words ! Just in a flashing second she won-
dered if it would have come natural to her to
reply. She looked searchingly round the box —
but a little light came in at the square window, a
mere fading beam, and there was no lamp. Oh,
if it had been Essex ! She could have told him
true. She thought of her duty, she thought of
her free choice, she thought of her ideals. She
was strong enough then for the ordeal by fire.
She belonged now to the man beside her, she
had chosen to belong to him ; and he was hers,
she had selected him to be hers.

" I will love our child," she said. He said
nothing, he was more than happy.

Some priest wrapped in mystic adoration,
kneeling in the chequered light of the Virgin's
chapel, praying for the atonement of man's sins
to woman, who has felt his heart reel to that
most sacred depth of humility which is the first
step- upon the gold stairway of pardon, might
sympathise with Gurdon's feelings then.

Presently he awoke to be a man again.

" Will you not say once, now, that you love
me ?" he asked.

"Need we say our alphabet?" asked Gallia,

298 GALLIA.

with a swift change of humour, and he was sure
he had made a mistake. " Ah, yes," she went
on ; "I must tell you. I am not marrying you
because I love you."

" Then forgive me my vanity — if I took that
for granted, it is because I knew of no other
possible reason for your marrying me. Why,
then — why are you willing to be my wife ?"

"Frankly, I am not allured by the prospect of
being anybody's wife," she said, taking up her
adherence to her older feelings. " But I want to
marry ; and I want you to be my husband — or
rather, the father of my child."

He was puzzled and he was piqued, — he did
not in the least follow her.

" I do not love you — I may no doubt come to
have a strong affection for you." — He recovered
a little — he was ready, as every man is ready, to
undertake to teach her to love him; he was
going to tell her so in a minute. " But I admire
you ; you fill out my idea of what a man should
be ; not only in looks, but in qualities. Perhaps
it seems strange to you, but I have never had
much love in me, and that little I used up some
time ago, on someone who did not care for me,
and whom, if I had married, I should have been
disappointed with now. I have only yearned to
be a mother — I can't explain and say more about
it than that, even to you; I have wanted the
father of my child to be a fine, strong, manly

GALLIA. 299

man, full of health and strength. A man who
is a man, whose faults are manly ; who has never
been better than a mere man in all his life."

He marvelled greatly, then he said, " But — do
you know enough of my life to feel satisfied ?
For, Gallia, I love you. So much that you shall
take me on your own terms. I shall be yours,
and you shall be your own ! "When I cannot
understand, I shall still love you. I do not quite
follow you now, but with you I know that there
is no single feeling but what is noble and honour-
able and honest. Now — you must hear about
my life — I must be as honest as you would have
me — as, indeed, I wish to be."

" Thank you, Mark; as I said before, the dis-
comfort shall not be all yours. It would have
been strange if, with my views, I had agreed to
marry you being ignorant of your life. An odd
series of little circumstances placed me in pos-
session of certain facts" —

" You know that I loved Margaret Essex ?"

" "Well, I did not. But I could not forgive
any man who had not loved Margaret Essex.
She is the ideal woman. She is a thousand
women — not one woman. All men ought to
worship her."

He laughed, picked up her hand and kissed it.
" Looking back on it, it seems very curious," he
said ; " she touched none of the chords you touch
in me. Every fibre in me loves you!" His

300 GALLIA.

voice was warm and joyous again. " So what
did you know?" He had no suspicion of what
was coming.

" "Well, I believe I was already dreaming of
marrying you — possibly, and if you would have
me — when the knowledge of the illness of your
mistress came to my ears."

If a cannon had gone off close to his head,
Mark would have been less amazed.

" You will believe that I was not prying into
your life," said Gallia judicially, not as one
asking a question, but as one giving an order.
He was too astounded to speak. Could Essex,
who just possibly might know something of it,
have — but never, never, never — that was wholly
impossible.

She recapitulated the chain of events that had
put her in possession of these facts, and still
Mark's silence held good.

" I went down into the country to think things
over, to review my life, and be quite sure of what
I wanted to do with it. At first — just at first,
Mark — I did not like it; it somehow — did not
please me. I will not go into the reasons, though
I think I know them all now. Then — I saw
that I must reform my thoughts ; I saw that the
logical sequence of my views about the kind of
man I wanted to marry read equally as my
approval" —

" Don't, Gallia ! For God's sake, don't, don't,

GALLIA. 301

don't !" Without knowing why, Mark knew that
he could not bear this. He could bear the rest,
but this he simply could not bear. It was the
agony of knives to him.

There was a pause; in Gallia's brain an
explanation of his feeling made itself heard.
Throughout the ages, a man's wife is expected
to disapprove of his mistress while she forgives
him for having one; all this is tacit. It is
impossible for a man to listen to his adored wife
talking — in no matter what fashion — of his pre-
viously cherished mistress. That this is as in-
comprehensible as the number of physical ele-
ments matters nothing. It is so.

" Would you rather have me angry with you
about it ?" asked Gallia.

" Infinitely rather," said Gurdon ; " it would
be more natural."

" If I loved you, I might be jealous of her,"
thought she, but wisely said nothing.

" Well, you cannot get over the fact that it was
owing to my hearing of her at the time, and in
the way that I did, that decided me to marry

you."

Gallia clasped her hands round her knees and
looked disconsolately before her.

Gurdon groaned. The longest pause of all
occurred.

Gallia abandoned Gurdon, his head in his
hands, and occupied herself with Brownie.

26

302 GALLIA.

In the meantime, the train drew into the
station. They roused themselves, and the horse
was got out and a man found to take it to the
Hall.

" I find they can have a fly from the inn in a
few minutes."

" Very well. I am going to walk. I should
prefer it."

This sounded as though Mark was to have the
privilege of driving alone in the fly; he could
not believe that she meant it.

" If you wish to walk, I am very willing; hut
are you not tired ?"

" Not the least. I'm made of better stuff. I
want to walk because I want to think. You had
better think too. I see I have frightened you.
You had never seen the real me till now, and
you don't like her. Very well. Let her go —
there is no harm done."

" Hush ! hush ! Life is not a child's game,
Gallia."

" No," she murmured, with a wry smile ; " it
is too dull for that."

They had been walking down the ash-path,
now Gallia led the way to a short cut through
the wood which cut off the hill. He put his
arm round her and they walked silently on.
After all, he thought, there isn't another woman
alive who could regard such affairs as calmly, or
with so complete an absence of hysteria. And

GALLIA. 303

he was going to teach her to love him. Things
seemed to point very naturally to his asking her
to forgive him. This is not at all an unusual
way for things to point, in the early stages of a
love episode, — later, the woman has to ask for-
giveness.

" It is to be as you please — you shall take me
for whatever you please, no matter in what ca-
pacity, for better or for worse. I — I am proud
that you want me."

It was really rather fine in Mark.

"Perhaps you will learn to have some little
feeling for me — some day."

This rather astonished Gallia, who was, as a
rule, occupied singly with her own life and her
own future, feeling these to be as much as she
could manage.

" It would disappoint me very greatly in my-
self," she said, very naively, " if I came to love
you."

Mark laughed. Somehow this intoxicated
him. He took her in his arms and crushed her
till he frightened her. Being only a simple
young woman after all, this had a great effect
upon her. If only Essex had had the grit to go
as far — to laugh and go as far.

CHAPTER XXX.

There were signs of commotion in the house
when Gallia and Gurdon walked into the hall
about nine o'clock, — commotion of a regulated
and decently-constrained nature, as became a
large and well-managed house, but nevertheless
commotion.

Gallia's eye fell on a copy of the Figaro of that
day's date on one of the hall tables, and, with a
confused idea in her mind, she left Gurdon and
ran along the nagged terrace upon which the
windows of the drawing-rooms opened.

Upon so hot an evening as it was, none were
closed.

"Aunt Celia!' she exclaimed in great ex-
citement,— "well?" — bursting into the room.
" When I saw the Figaro — Yes, papa, perfectly
sound and unhurt! Brownie fell lame, so we
came home by train. Forgive my not wel-
coming you except by an Indian warwhoop. I
am so glad to see you, Aunt Celia, for, of course,
it means you are better." She came over to
the arm-chair in which Mrs. Leighton, still in
her bonnet, and slowly peeling off outer wisps
of wholly unprotective laces, had evidently not
long sat down.
304

GALLIA. 305

"I was well enough to escape, dear, and I
have come here to recover, if you will let me,
from the severities of the cure. They have tried
me inexpressibly." She shut her eyes, raised
her eyebrows, and, with a slight trembling of
the delicate ivory and lavender-veined lids, in-
haled whiffs of strong ammonia from a bottle.

Gallia had the good taste not to exclaim upon
her improved appearance, for nothing would
have offended the old lady more than any re-
mark of the kind, but she was, in point of fact,
looking wonderfully better.

Just as Gallia finished a somewhat fuller ex-
planation of the accident, Gurdon, who had
changed his clothes, came into the room. A
servant had apprised him of Mrs. Leighton's
arrival, and Gallia could not withhold her ad-
miration of his greeting of her. The homage
of her favourite young man threw a great sparkle
into the old lady's face, and even to the orange
ribbon in her charming bonnet, she seemed to
brighten.

" Your rooms, dear Aunt Celia" —

" Thank you, child, I will go upstairs after I
have had my bouillon ; oh, here it comes ! Of
course I have brought my own sheets ; — I have
given up camel's hair and am sleeping in pine
wool now. No sheet can be fit to use unless it
has been aired for forty-eight hours consecu-
tively." Mrs. Leighton spoke with authority;

u 26*

306 GALLIA.

she was in the habit of changing the material of
her sheets in a sweeping fashion about every
three months, and invariably carried the latest
fad to her friends' houses when she visited.

" Thank you, Gerald," as Lord Hamesthwaite's
arm came to her assistance in leaving the room.
" You will tell me your fortunes to-morrow ?"
This to Mark, who was opening the door.
; "I am coming up with you to see that you
have everything," said Gallia, whose cheek was
flushing faintly, even as was Mark's.

But there were no confidences of any sort that
night, and, greatly wearied by her own affairs,
and the perplexity that these had brought her,
Gallia sent messages downstairs to her guests,
and shut herself into her own rooms for the
night.

A night's rest is supposed to have a chemical
effect on most situations ; in the morning light
difficulties are said to appear more surmountable.
Gallia, however, was not conscious of having
difficulties exactly ; to act in accordance with a
plan is not necessarily to make things easier for
the people with whom you act, but for the actor
it greatly lightens the task of living.

Gallia, all her life long, had acted in accord-
ance with sets of preconceived ideas ; with her
growth these had either strengthened or modi-
fied, but in some form or other they were always
there.

GALLIA. 307

Instinct, as will have been seen, had no place
in deciding her actions ; nor, in a certain sense,
could intuition have had much force with her.
Some people, whose minds have been trained in
religion, will do what they think God would
have them do — that is, what they believe to be
right. Gallia, who had no religious ideas, and
had never at any moment in her life felt the want
of any, was only anxious to do what was honest
and honourable.

If a given movement were fair and just to
others, then it was the one that she would take ;
and upon such points she examined herself
rigorously from time to time, and raised her
standard always a little bit higher.

Before breakfast next morning she had an
interview with her father, of a quite satisfactory
kind; to him she naturally wished to confide her
feelings towards Gurdon at once, and take his
advice about announcing her engagement. Lord
Hamesthwaite had nothing but wbat was favour-
able to say. He was not an ambitious man, but
even if he were, he felt he might have had reason
to be satisfied with Mark.

In Brownie's loose-box she found Gurdon,
whom she sent straightway to her father's room.

Margaret and Robbie she found upon the
terrace.

" I absolutely repudiate the idea that that pic-
nic in any way assisted me," Hobbie was saying,

308 GALLIA.

in answer to some badinage from Gertrude. "I
have been engaged to Margaret for about two
years."

" How one does dread proposals !" Miss Janion
said fervently. " They are so samey and they
are so dull. There is something frightful in
sitting beside a man and knowing he is trying
to lead up to a proposal. And when he has led
up to it ! I can sit and say with my lips every
succeeding sentence — you know as one does
some of the prayers in church. There's a system,
and he never departs from it. He always has
to go into his past. Have you noticed what a
passion men have for telling girls about their
pasts ? They are so proud of their blundering,
unimaginative records,— and, of course, every
girl must think how far better she could have
done it. Men are like children who have come
home from the seashore." She fixed a bright
magnetic eye upon Lord Shillinglee, who ap-
peared in the distance, and drew him to the
spot. " They have to tell about how they pad-
dled, and just how deep they went in, and all
about the queer things they fished out, and
about the crabs that caught hold of their toes."
Everybody had to laugh at this bit of Gertrude's
description, though Margaret was blushing like
a nectarine. "And all the time you see how
awfully frightened at the crabs they have been.
'But our little shoes were hanging round our

GALLIA. 309

necks, Nursey dear,' " — here she imitated the
small, high voice of the self-consciously good
child, — " they say, as they put them on again.
' And see how clean we've kept our overalls' I"

Robbie dissolved in a perfect paroxysm of
laughter.

" It will require enormous nerve to put a man
off this confession, they so love to be forgiven ;
it will be depriving him of a sacred moment;
but the man I marry will have to be generous
and make the sacrifice. I have heard the detailed
pasts of so many men, it will be quite refreshing
to know nothing of my husband's."

While the young people babbled and laughed
together, Mrs. Leighton's maid had been busily
erecting a large square umbrella of cream-col-
oured muslin, bordered with engaging frills, and
lined with pink; beneath this had been placed
a comfortable chair. To this bower Mark now
escorted the old lady, and they fell into earnest
conversation. Mark could not detail his fortune
without Gallia's permission, but the skilful diplo-
matist, who had liked and encouraged him from
the first, put certain astute questions, and drew
her own conclusions from the guarded replies.
Fortunately, the state of affairs which she sus-
pected pleased her greatly. Robbie's engage-
ment to Margaret had put her in a good temper,
and she soon dispelled a slight sense of regret
that Gallia was not to marry a man of old family

310 GALLIA.

— old family being a thing that she had always
declared her dislike of, publicly.

She would have been angry if it had been
Essex, and she was always rather frightened
that it might be Essex. Yet there was Essex,
his clothes having been fetched for the night
from Hiddenfold — there was Essex looking
vaguely out over the park. When Gurdon
joined Gallia, Mrs. Leighton summoned Hubert.
She put a number of quite barefaced questions
to him, about his career and prospects and inten-
tions. With people whom she believed to be
unimportant, she could behave in a mildly un-
scrupulous manner that was surprising. Finesse,
she argued, should never be thrown away.

"Marriage?" said Dark, speculatively, when
he had been led to the block. " A man with
pronounced heart-disease ought not to marry.
Nothing is more inevitably hereditary. " ISo,"
smiling at her faintly, "I never contemplated
marriage."

" Funny !" the old lady was left murmuring ;
" everybody has insisted on Gallia being con-
sistent, and makes no allowance for a possible
reversion to the type ; she has acted in accord-
ance with her absurd opinions, because her
heart has never awakened to scatter her reason.
She will fall in love with that attractive mani-
festation of heart-disease yet. But she will be
married, so it will not signify."

GALLIA. 311

Mrs. Leighton was not very far out here, and
would not have been so far out, had she had
more leisure to observe Gallia and Essex to-
gether, and know that her prophecy had come
true already. The wind grew a little too strong,
and she sauntered indoors for more shelter.

" Essex, I want a word with you." Gurdon
came up and put a hand on Dark's arm ; " shall
we go into the smoking-room ? there is no one
there."

Not especially wondering what Mark could
have to say to him, Essex followed into the
6moking-room with a leisurely step. When he
came out three-quarters of an hour later, his face
moved unconsciously; his old well-accustomed
smile struggled to play over it.

" You see, with Denyer on the spot, and things
at their present juncture, I cannot possibly leave
here," Gurdon was saying as they walked out
together.

Essex nodded once or twice, and went on up
the stairs alone to Gallia's study.

" I am just leaving," he said, " and heard that
you were here."

" You are going away now ?"

" Yes ; the atmosphere is becoming somewhat
overcharged with sentiment; besides, I ought to
be going back to work."

" Do you know," she said, observing him very
closely, " you look ill."

312 GALLIA.

"Do I?"

" Pale. You do really ! A curious pallor. Is
your heart all right, Dark ?"

" Bust up in my rowing days, I believe, but it
will last my time."

" Why did you never tell me ?" she asked, with
a sense of having been shut out from his confi-
dence.

"Had I not enough disadvantages in your
eyes, without that ?"

Gallia coloured very deeply and painfully.

" I should only have mentioned it to you in
one event."

"And that?"

"Well, we needn't mind that now. Heart-
disease, you know, is hereditary."

A curious light came into Gallia's eyes — she
understood him.

" Good-bye. We sha'n't meet again for some
little time, I think. When does your marriage
take place ?"

" Oh, no date has been spoken of yet."

" Ah, well, I shall see you then."

" I don't think I want you to come."

"Really? Just as you wrish. I would like
to have seen you looking dreadfully beautiful.
But you won't banish me afterwards alto-
gether ?"

" Oh no. Besides, Mark looks upon you as a
friend."

GALLIA. 313

Essex rose and held out his hand, and his
smiling eyes met hers.

" He has some little reason to," he said quietly,
and was gone.

In a quarter of an hour he was walking to the
station.

" I shall get to the junction in time for the
2.15 to Brighton," he said, " and then I can do
my last service to Gallia. The first, she said,
was burying the letter. The second will be
squaring Gurdon's mistress. Fate has at any-
rate a redeeming sense of humour."

THE END.

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